Ask HN: Developers who became engineering managers, how was the experience?
I've been in software development for more than 20 years. Here are my 2 cents:- Training, training, training! Without exception, all the technical managers that I've worked with had arrived where they were at based on technical merits. However, being a manager, especially being a leader have nothing to do with technical knowledge. Therefore management and leadership training is a must. This doesn't necessarily need to be an organized class, but being coached and mentored would be an amazing start.- Management and Leadership are different skills. This goes back to my #1. One needs to develop both.- Ideally, you become a servant of the team. You're there to help them become highly productive. Your first job is not to solve the technical problems yourself, not to micromanage everyone, not to command and control. You're there to create a self-managing team that can, ironically, work without a manager.- You are there to ensure that their motivation and engagement are at a high level. One can be motivated by not engaged. You need to know the differences and the ways to increase them.- You need empathy to become a good leader.- You need to be a good communicator. And transparency is a great tool.- You have to ensure that your team members become good enough to be able to leave your company and find plenty of jobs anywhere else, but also ensure that they wouldn't want to leave.