The FASTEST Way To Become A Manager As A Developer

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what is up it's only Tuesday I guess what's the day today Tuesday December 3rd nice it's almost Christmas or something I guess um my stupid camera apparently did not want to hold a charge overnight and I guess this stupid courtesy shuttle has a USB charger that uh doesn't actually charge either so I tried recording this video this morning and uh it just uh died a few minutes in which is perfect so we'll get back into it um it says it's about like an hour to get home I'm leaving work pretty ear or pretty early pretty late it's uh it's already after 6 so it's just been couple couple long days um and you can't see outside but uh I don't think in my entire life I've ever seen this much fog anywhere um I thought there was something on the windshield of this car but

it's nuts uh there's there's so much fog uh anyway topic for today is uh submitted from a viewer um the question was about being able to move into management from a individual contributor role and sort of like what the what's the way way to Fast Track that right so um I apologize cuz I can't recall if it was someone that's junior or I feel like they were saying they have a few years of experience as an individual contributor and want to move into management but I think their point was they don't want to my God it's like a wall of just white in front of me right now it's not snowing it's just fog but they don't want to wait like they were saying like a decade till they move into a management position um so I want to talk through this uh we'll try

to see if we can approach things from like you know add the same company versus switching companies and that kind of thing uh my my thoughts around this and uh just want to remind people before I get into it if you have topics that you want to go over um or sorry want me to go over uh you can either comment below and happy to kind of uh read through and see if I can fit it in here or if you want it to be anonymous um find me on social media as a Dev leader any on any platform DM me send me a message there and just say hey like can you talk about this on code commute I'd like to keep it Anonymous I you know I no reason to kind of share who you are I'm happy to talk through things and

a reminder to the more context that you provide uh the more sort of uh context I have to work with if I'm going to offer advice uh when people ask very general things you get very very general answers sorry this person in front of me uh is really dropping the ball on Lane management if they just move up about like a foot I could pass some but apparently uh driving's not uh anyone's Forte today okay so thoughts on this let's take uh let's kind of FOC Fus on where someone's at as an individual contributor and at least how they can start moving in the direction of kind of Skilling up or working towards um like a formal leadership type of position and um first of all I think if you don't have opportunities that like explicitly present themselves at work like someone's not giving you

these types of opportunities someone's not pushing you in this direction um my general advice for really anything in your career is like don't wait for people to um to kind of just put the opportunities in front of you like look for them and create them now that doesn't mean that like as an individual contributor you just like stop coding and just like start delegating things and doing one-on ones with people and just like pretend you're the manager of the team um like please don't do that because that would be super weird and you'd probably have uh a lot of other issues at work but um like try to create some types of informal leadership uh opportunities right so if there are things like being able to Mentor more Junior people on the team to help them out uh onboarding people to the team if you

have interns you could be like a I'm going to use air quotes you're like an intern buddy where you're their Mentor for the time that they're going to be with your team like looking for these types of things and volunteering for them or taking them on sort of in formally I think is such a good opportunity for a bunch of different reasons one is like first of all if you try to create this opportunity it shows you're being proactive um taking initiative and uh this is I feel like a good you know set of characteristics that I would want any leader or manager to try and embody so like start doing that right like lead uh demonstrate these types of uh of traits that you would want to see in someone who is managing or leading and then number two is obviously like you're building

that actual experience of of uh being able to kind of flex your people muscles so to speak so if you're able to work with um with people on a people perspective I think that's really helpful so it's not just like I'm going to code more things uh I'm not just going to like architect and design more things yes you want to keep on top of this stuff because it's part of your role already as an IC but finding ways that you can uh have more of these other opportunities is key so um sort of the first takeaway here is don't just sit back and wait for such opportunities start trying to create them or look for them seek them out be proactive with that said um something that to me like it it always feels obvious and I I shouldn't make this assumption because I

know from having enough conversations like for whatever reason this is not a lot of people's obvious First Step um but like talk to your manager I think it's funny right like this is going to sound kind of silly but um I know this from from doing like uh early in career mentorship for a few years at Microsoft where someone will have a one1 with me they're early in their career they're very Junior they're new to Microsoft and um what ends up happening is they're talking to me about something where it's like either they're having challenges within the team they're uh they're looking for clarity whatever it happens to be say in this person's case it's like hey I'm really interested in and working towards becoming a manager so what would happen is I have these people coming to me and having conversations with me and

I would say like oh like have you talked to your manager about this and then the answer is no and it's like well wait why not like why am I the first person you're talking to about this and I realize it's because sometimes people have managers where like uh that relationship feels weird right like they're like I'm not totally comfortable asking my manager about this stuff like I don't know how to ask my manager about career progression or performance rewards um promotion like I don't know how to talk about that with my manager so like I'm just talking to you Nick like you're just a dude like you seem to have some insight about this kind of stuff but we don't have this weird working Dynamic so it's just easier so I I do keep forgetting that it's not uh totally obvious that people are

or like should be doing this so I'm going to say it out loud again if you're interested in any type of career movement in this particular case we're talking about you're an IC you're like think that I want to work towards becoming a manager if that's an interest of yours talk to your manager if you feel that you can't talk to your manager about this stuff um this is way to too like broad of a thing to dive into but like either work on that relationship with your manager where you can have meaningful conversations about this stuff um or I mean if you're like oh I could never talk to my manager about career growth like maybe you're in the wrong spot like that doesn't seem like a a good spot where you're going to try to grow into a manager or anything else so

um maybe reconsider that um I I would like to encourage people to to do the former though right like try to build that relationship so have a conversation with your manager this is an area of interest for you now one of the challenging things is that as a manager if someone came to me and was like I'm interested in management like I don't have have that position available right like I don't even I'm not even hiring people right now as ic's so I don't have IC positions I certainly don't have a manager position below me um can I move over here my God this uh you can't see the lane but it's like it's an absolute nightmare right here there's tons of people like there's two lanes merging into one merging onto the highway and then if you're like me you're going the opposite direction

cuz you're trying to to get off here but uh it's just a absolute cluster um I can't believe this anyway um what was I even saying now we're talking about trying to be working towards management right okay so it's a challenging situation because like I need to I I need to and I want to support people in their career progression but like I need to be very transparent like if you want to become a manager awesome I personally I'm the type of manager like I want to support you in this kind of stuff let me try to find whatever opportunity I can that aligns to these interests for you that make sense but like the reality is like it's not like it's going to take a year it's not going to be too not going to be 3 years if I don't have a manager

position like I'm not the one who's going to be putting you there so it's kind of weird cuz I need people to recognize this right like um I want to support you I will support you I will you know if it means like working towards a team lead position if you're not even there yet like let's talk through that let me fi like find and create these informal leadership opportunities with you like I want to support you on that but like it doesn't matter if it's 1 2 or 10 years if I don't have a manager position opening up underneath me I cannot promote you to a manager it's impossible um unless I'm growing as a manager and I become a manager of managers that I can bring people in right so the point though is I need people to understand that but the second

part is like if someone were you know um working with me for however long trying to make progress in this direction if it got to the point where we're both kind of feeling like hey like you're probably ready for your first opportunity at this I don't have it for you um I've talked about this in previous videos my perspective on this is like I should expect that you're going to leave and instead of just like being shocked by it or surprised by it like if you're going to be demotivated because your career progression this this path that you want to take is now like was supported by me but now is being inhibited by me because I don't have this position for you I will expect that you will become more and more disengaged so it it takes like a 180 right like oh thanks

so much for all the support I feel like I'm working towards this and then you start kind of like really getting there and then all of it's not all of a sudden but like it starts to become well why can't I progress anymore and it's like yeah because I don't have that opportunity for you so I would personally want to get ahead of that and once we start to realize like hey look like you you probably are ready for your first opportunity this I would at a company like Microsoft at least that's big if you're working in a larger organization it's probably easier I would be trying to work with you to find these opportunities still at Microsoft right like or if I were working somewhere else same thing applies and that's because if I think that you are good you're working towards this why

would we not want to try and keep you right but again if I cannot support that if the roles aren't available where we're at I cannot and will not be surprised if you leave because you should right if your growth opportunity is inhibited where you are you should leave and it's like it feels crappy to say because obviously you know as someone like as someone who's managing people I want to invest time in people's growth I want that to happen but like if I get if I get people to a point or I'm working with them to a point where they can no longer grow I shouldn't be surprised by it so um that's my philosophy when it comes to this kind of stuff so that's how I would want to approach people you know that came to me and said they wanted to become

a manager um I realize that if you're listening to this if you're like hey my manager is not like that that's you know bull crap advice like I get it I I'm not every manager every manager is not me either everyone's going to be different but if you're if you're kind of making assumptions about your working relationship with your manager just because like you've you don't even know you should at least in my opinion you should at least try having these conversations to like you know say like this is a direction I'm interested in like can we talk about it right okay so so you want to look for and create opportunities by being proactive um you want to make sure you're being clear with your manager about this stuff I I don't think that there's any shortcuts to this kind of thing normally okay

and I say that with an extreme bias and if you're kind of new to watching my videos and stuff if you don't really have my background I'll share a little bit about it um so I'm at Microsoft now I've been here for about four and a half years as a started at Microsoft as a principal principal level engineering manager and um prior to that I was at a like it was a startup when I started there 8 years before um and I was an engineering manager there for 8 years so almost the entire time that I was at this startup before Microsoft I was uh in a role that was essentially like a a technical manager so I was a software engineer writing code and managing teams but the reason that I'm I have a weird bias for all this stuff is because very shortly

after I started being fresh out of school I was leading teams that's not normal that's super weird it's not um I'm not saying it's impossible because clearly I was in that position I'm not special in the sense that it's because I was so good uh at all these things I would love to be able to say yes it's because I'm the most amazing and I'm super special this way NOP um circumstances right I was at a startup and they were growing teams and literally they were like hey like you're a good developer you seem to be able to talk really you know well with the other developers and communicate and like do you want to start doing this and I'm like I literally have no idea what I'm doing sure like we know it's got to get done right cool it's a startup right yeah

okay like let's let's go and I had such a great HR leader the entire time I was there and regularly regularly she would have conversations with me and she would say do you like how are you feeling about this are you ready to kind of go into management or are you feeling like you want to stay on a tech path and it took me almost 8 years to to finally realize like yeah management it took me a really long time and it's because by the end of that I started to realize that I was having more impact by being a manager versus just by like if I could remove myself more from code it gave me more time to have bigger impact so that's when I started to realize like management um now that's not going to be the same for everyone right so number

one my my Situation's a little bit unique um I do want to kind of transition to talk about startup in big Tech kind of situations but um so that's coming right up but I wanted to also mention before I forget because I'm really good at going on tangents is that management is absolutely not for everyone and I'm not saying that because I'm like trying to gatekeep it I mean literally you might hate doing it because you might go man I really love writing code and guess how much code I write at work every day approximately zero I write zero code every day at work for four and a half years that's not the same for every engineering manager not by a long shot but the more focused you become down this career path you will find statistically the less code you're writing at work I

wrote I write code every day outside of work because I love doing it um but if if that's something where you're like I need to feel I need to feel fulfilled by by writing code and actually having my hands in the code and writing software you may very well find that like management does not feel good for you if you don't like working with people very closely and literally dealing with all sorts of people problems regularly you may not like management so I'm saying this because even when I'm kind of giving you guidance around hey like try to you know Mentor Juniors try to be an onboarding buddy try to be like an intern buddy or intern Mentor these are all awesome things but like you're still not getting all of it because I will have conversations like regularly when you have enough people on

your team you have conversations regularly with challenging stuff going on with them outside of work going on within work there's nonstop things that are like kind of under the radar and it's all about dealing with people if you don't like this kind of stuff genuinely you will probably not enjoy being a manager it's not about oh it's a better title like that's bull crap at some places it is and I would say that those places are probably structured in a pretty dangerous way because if your idea of reward in Engineers is by promoting them into management that's a that's not a good spot to be in because it's literally a completely different role just as a heads up okay Mr Tesla get a grip you're not going to like try to cut me off here it's called a zipper merge you'll figure it out God

I hate this X1 it's so crappy um okay okay let's go startups larger companies kind of talk through some differences here U again these are sweeping generalizations uh I totally expect at least one person watching this will say that's absolutely not how it worked for me or what I've seen and you're totally right so we're not we're not going to be arguing about it I have to talk in generalizations because it's impossible to address these things otherwise wi so please understand that there's 100% going to be exceptions to anything I say plus I'm only one person giving you one perspective okay um at startups I would say these types of opportunities are a lot more common and what I mean by that is like if you're at a company like a startup that is scaling and actually growing and not like constantly on the verge

of like about to disappear um sorry I got to move over one more Lane before I can think clearly and uh it's really difficult because I got a merge into this fast lane and um this oh my God come on buddy just get over here this uh X1 I can put my foot on the floor and like it doesn't go anywhere um which is pretty scary not that it matters when you have someone like this in front of you that's also going apparently negative speed um okay so when startups are scaling you're going to have a couple things going on right one is that you're going to have uh a single team that you might be on that's growing and you will also have new teams that are spinning up and how these things happen can be very very organic but it's also likely a

lot more common if the startup is growing again if the startup that you're at is like I'm going to use the word stagnant I don't necessarily I know it sounds like a very negative word you might be at a very successful startup and the growth is stagnant in terms of headcount okay U there's still there's companies that have been wildly successful that don't have many employees so I'm not saying it's a bad thing so don't interpret it the wrong way but if you're at a company where the headcount growth is stagnant this is not going to be very applicable okay so if the company is growing in terms of headcount there's either new teams forming or teams are growing now in both of those cases there are more opportunities to need more managers so I personally think um the the strategy at a smaller company

for this type of thing is like finding yourself in a position where you're taking a lot of initiative um you are diving into trying to lead projects or kind of taking on like that team lead role um and just taking a lot of initiative and responsibility I think that more often than not as long as there's sort of um promote from within you're setting yourself up for um for Success that way uh I early on at the company that I was at before Microsoft I feel like uh like really early it was kind of like promote from within because I got the position I was given and I stuck with it uh later on it felt like very very very much the opposite oh we need someone okay like we're going to hire oh we need someone else we're going to hire we need to

bring in uh VP we're going to we're going to hire um it felt for the large majority of the time I was there that they flipped from promote from within to external hire which is a pretty weird feeling because when you're at a company for a long time and I'm by the way I'm sharing this not because um because I have a a problem with that company not by any means um I'm sharing because this is something that you might want to think through cuz it is kind of weird um and I can safely say like uh I feel like if he wasn't super busy I could message the founder of that company or the CEO from that company and message them and have a happy conversation and I don't work there anymore right like so it's not like bad blood but that company did

a lot of external hiring Ing and the reason it's a weird feeling is because when you're there at the beginning there's one level between you and the CEO or the founder in this case both for me right there it's just me and them and then as the company grows you basically even though you have all of the tenure you keep moving further and further away from being able to have more impactful decisionmaking which is really wild right um and this really interesting situation where like I remember hiring people that would be my peers and because of how our career struct or career ladder kind of work as we were making it because I was a technical manager there was no technical director role so I could never move to be a director and because I had peers that were not technical managers they could get

promoted into being directors so like a very weird kind of situation right even though I had the tenure and like had been you know managing teams by that time for like seven years you know kind of kind of weird right so anyway it's uh it's something to think about because it's not that that can't happen at larger companies because even for me the last team I was on you know as they when they're doing reorgs and stuff you can be moved further away from executive levels or closer so it it happens everywhere but just something to think about when you're growing with a startup right if they're promoting from within versus external hire so if you're at a small company like I said I think taking initiative um to try and Lead projects if those things grow into uh full-on products that have to be

expanded need more team members around them all sorts of stuff like this is where I I personally feel like there's lots of opportunity um for kind of demon like hey look I've been leading projects um people on the team you know look up to me as an as an informal leader I've been doing it like um you know I'm already kind of mentoring a lot of people on the team like I'm basically doing what a what an engineering manager might be responsible for but it's not formalized and you haven't given me sort of like the formal um responsibility of like actually doing one- ones for career growth and stuff like that right um so then they might say hey you know what like let's let's formalize it let's hire more people or whatever you can help scale the team so anyway that's how I would

look at things from the startup side this type of thing is not impossible for big Tech it's not impossible but um I feel like depending on the company or where you're working like what organization you're in things might feel a little bit more solidified in terms of like this is the way things are and uh it might be where you are in the company might feel really weird to just have like a whole new team have to get spun up from nothing right like oh we we just made up a new product well maybe not where you're working maybe it's like most of the products and services are pretty steady so what's different though is that it might mean moving to different parts of the organization right hey look you're in this part of the or things are pretty steady where you're at but over

here this part of the org is growing and they're actually basically there's a manager that is going to be hiring under other managers under them scaling out teams that's actually how I was brought into Microsoft okay so the team that I got hired onto the manager uh had a pretty large team and said I guess you know had headcount to hire in a manager so me and his initial plans were that he was going to scale out these other teams to to bring on or promote from within other managers right so by growing existing teams it was like hey there's this opportunity so I think if you're at a big company and trying to stay within the big company I don't have stats on this but I would say the opportunity probably looks like looking for teams that are growing in this regard and then

like applying to some other part of the organization and that's because if that phenomenon I just explained of like hey this other team's growing a manager kind of hiring other managers under them um if your manager is not doing that like it's it's just like I said earlier it's going to feel like you don't have that career path so at a bigger company I see that being more of the common um pattern is like that's kind of happening so to give you uh a counter example to that it's literally the opposite of what I just said when I switched the first part's not the opposite the second part is when I switched teams at Microsoft it was a similar example to the first part which was manager my current manager scaling out a team I need to bring in an engineering manager for this that's

me okay so that happened the team I left they actually did two internal promotions so I left and then they they internally promoted two other people to engineering manager which is awesome I by the way I love I'm a huge fan of internal promotions because like when you have people that are just doing awesome and demonstrating that they're able to do awesome if they have the interest and they're looking for that opportunity that change like I don't know why you like wouldn't just lean into into that I feel like it's such a huge like positive engagement like man I don't know I don't feel like it's done enough but at least again I don't have stats on it I have not seen it done enough to my liking in my career not even for me I mean like just in general so um I was

really happy to see that I thought that was really cool news um but I I do feel like in in big tech companies or larger companies in general en it's probably more common that you'll find yourself having to look to other parts of the org to say hey like who's scaling out teams and I'm going to go apply for that which can make it a little awkward right because you're trying to get support from your manager and then like I was hinting at earlier like is that going to create this Dynamic where your manager is like inevitably I need to expect you're going to leave or I'm hoping that our team is growing and I can kind of promote you so um I don't know how much more on this I have to to offer um in terms of timelines and stuff like I guess

here here's what I would have to say um if you're if you're hearing this you're kind of listening through and you're like okay good I wanted to find something like this so I can he how I can get to be a manager I would and I mean this genuinely like because I know that some people probably don't um probably just don't totally get it yet when I when I've been saying it but if your goal is to become a manager just so that you can say great I'm at a a certain level like you know hitting manager is like that's what it's going to mean to be successful or it's because managers get to make all the decisions or managers get paid more or manager the only way I can get promoted like if those are the reasons why you're trying to say how do

I become a manager faster or you know what's the shortcut to it I I just genuinely want to say like you may want to reconsider your approach or your reason because number one it's not it's not true that the only way to sort of Advance your career is to to move into management yes it's true that like the more that you're advancing a career like at a minimum informal leadership will continue to go up and up just because you're having more and more impact but like even at Microsoft right there are people that have an individual contributor role it's like distinguished engineer right there's like princip there's partner there's I don't even know um but yeah there's like distinguished I don't even know what level that is at Microsoft but there are companies Microsoft included that have career trajectories for individual contributors and you never

have to take on like a formal management role and like especially if you continue down the manager path like manager of managers where like you're just becoming more and more removed from like putting your hands in code or seeing code so number one that opportunity to become an individual contributor at a higher level absolutely exists you don't need to move into management that's that's the first part number two is like as a manager like yeah like I have decision- making power but you bet bet you're ass that I'm talking with my principal Engineers on my team and leaning on my team in general for all sorts of things like I am not I mean it's a little different where I used to work I was you know a technical expert just because I was there for literally forever I guess that's not how you use

the word literally but I think you know what I mean um I was there for a long time so and I had built a lot of the stuff so I was a technical expert I would still lean on my team for a lot of stuff as an engineering manager that's what I do I need to help my team and ensure that my team is growing they're effective and they better be way more knowledgeable in these areas than I am that's the whole point they're the experts if they're brand new or they're Junior like yeah they might not be experts yet but that's my goal with them I want them to be the subject matter experts so I'm not going to just like sit in a room and just go make technical decisions and like just tell people what to do that would be ridiculously unsafe

so as an engineering manager I'm not making all the decisions right it's also worth mentioning that like as a manager especially like a middle manager right so like I don't I'm not a manager of managers at this point in my career um I talked about this on one of the the other videos if I would have stayed at the last company I I could guarantee that I would be you know either director or VP level there um so like manager managers type of situation and that's because like even before I left they were I mentioned there was no like director role for me but they were like kind of they're trying to figure that out like what that would look like so uh and that's already four and a half years ago so would have at a at a minimum been director so when you're

when you're a middle manager and you have individual contributors reporting to you and then you report to other managers it's literally I can't use the word literally that's just unfair it's a crappy spot to be in it's crappy because you're in the middle of everything so so you want to do good by your team you want to make sure your team's supported but then you get pressure from wherever else you're shielding your team from this stuff making sure that you can you know balance like you're getting all this pressure and you need to make sure that you're still supporting your team while simultaneously asking and uh asking them to to help deliver on on things that are you know there's always more and more priorities right so it's a really really tough spot to be in and again I'm not sitting here trying to say

and and I'm so good at it I'm just trying to say it's a crappy spot to be in it's hard it's definitely hard so um I I understand that some people might glamorize the role because oh like it it means you're in charge of people right like kind of but that's the I I would just say I feel like that's the wrong way to look at it um I'm a strong believer in like the the term like servant leadership um my role as a manager and I like I said this is my my belief My Philosophy with management my role is to enable my team and to serve my team that's what I'm supposed to be doing and as a result it's I I I don't know if it comes across this way all the time to other people but it should not feel like

I'm telling people what to do and like ordering them around it's very much like here's the direction um based on what I'm being told based on priorities that I've been working through an understanding here's the direction and let me know how I can support you however I can right um that's that's my goal I don't know if it always comes across the way but that's my goal so it's tough so if you're interested in being a manager and the interest was because of these things I just mentioned I'm I'm trying to suggest like maybe reconsider your why because if it's like just because oh the pay must be higher or I get to tell people what to do or whatever it's the only career path it means like advancing uh maybe maybe reconsider right so I would say if that's not the case if you're

like no I genuinely like being able to help others I like supporting others I like um you know working with other people to enable them to do better work and as a result have greater impact like if that's your motivation in my opinion I'm like okay like I feel like that's that's good motivation to and and I like working with people specifically right I don't want to forget that part it's obviously a core part if that's a motivation I'm like okay these feel like to me like the right things and you're not going to be like surprised and upset when you become a manager and you're like oh no like I have to work with people like yeah all the time man but then I would say if that's what you want you can start doing a lot of that without having to rush it

right this is a really long tangent because I started talk trying to talk about like how long does it take right my point is like what does it matter like it if the reason that you want to get into this is because you want to help enable people do better work and be more effective start today be a good teammate right like help enable other people do their work more effectively get your done because that's your the expectation on you get through your stuff but then help enable your teammates do awesome work you don't need to be a manager to have that when you're a manager you get to hopefully help do that I would hope and then you get a lot of more responsibilities that maybe aren't so fun so like like lean into the good stuff while you can um so I kind

of dancing around trying to give you timelines because I don't think I can't like it's I can't do that I would the person that had requested an answer to this like they're asking for like how do I shorten it right I don't want to wait like 10 years like I don't know man like it I would hope if you're focused on this stuff you're kind of like I said creating these opportunities and all that I would hope it's not going to take you 10 years especially if you're already in the industry you're you know you're already working but like it might and that might depend where you're at so again if you're building up the experience and those opportunities aren't being created for you regardless of whether or not you're at a startup or at a larger company if you're doing all this stuff start

looking outside of where you're at right um it's the same same idea of like if you're creating the opportunities for looking for informal leadership to kind of put you on the right path for working towards a manager role if the opportunity for a manager role is not where you are it's time to go look elsewhere and that's that that's the end um no I think I think more or less that's kind of what I have to say about that right so it could take it could take years um and I don't say that to be I don't know like I'm not I'm not trying to gatekeep anyone from I don't even have roles I don't have roles to be able to just to tell people no um I'm trying to say that it might take you even if you had all the skills it might

just take you time to go find where that opportunity is for you right so you have to look for the opportunity that's going to take time for the role itself um if you have not been practicing the skills that might honestly might take you years to practice those skills and and you might find that like you don't like it which is another reason why I don't I don't want to suggest that anyone tries to rush into this stuff if you love being a software developer and you're trying to look for some of these other things that a manager might do like you might find that you miss being a software developer so I personally think that not trying to rush into things especially this kind of thing is uh is a good opportunity to give you another example okay um let's not let's not pick

an engineering manager because you might perceive that as like a like a career step up because oh well I have an engineering manager they manage me that's my boss that's a career step up let's do um let's talk about what could be potentially perceived as a lateral move so um and maybe this is or isn't where you work I don't know but if you're a software developer imagine that instead of an engineering manager you were saying I want to become a project manager I really want to focus on coordinating projects I want to sort out dependencies I want to work across teams and uh and figure out timelines and and all this kind of stuff like okay cool like if that's what you want to do imagine if you could snap your fingers and all of a sudden you were a project manager right you

shortcut everything like how do you know that you even like doing it what if you snapped your fingers and became that project manager and you were like oh like I really don't enjoy this I really wish I was spending more time writing code uh I actually like um you know I don't know debugging things I like architecting things I like designing systems and guess what now you're not doing it so when you take the time to feel out these these uh these roles that you're trying to transition to and get a feel for if you enjoy doing it and you work at transitioning to them I think that that gives you this better opportunity to figure out like do I like doing this thing and am I doing it because I like it not because I think that on tap or it seems to look

better um I know like I can say with confidence I know engineering managers that became engineering managers and said again holy like I had no idea this is what it was like and for a lot of them it's because they were promoted into the role right like they weren't planning for it they were promoted into it and they were like oh man like this is weird like not I was expecting it's like yeah because you're just dealing with people the whole time um and I know people that I know I gave a project manager example and I want to talk about this too um I don't know if the role was officially project or product manager but I know a developer that had that role like as a developer and then moved into project or product management and did that for a bit and was

like holy crap man like no like I got to I got to go back to being a developer um so I think that it's worth you know if you're interested explore right see how you can be proactive try to create those opportunities be clear about asking for those opportunities try it out because if you try to rush into stuff you might find it's not for you um so I think that's where I'll leave that one I feel like I'm starting to repeat myself thought I do that a lot um I might be driving to the office again tomorrow maybe Thursday too kind of going in every day this week There's a a lot of stuff going on for work so trying to be present for that but uh it's uh it's taxing because number one this drive like how long was this almost an hour

I mean there's a couple things number one this drives long when there's traffic and today there was tons of traffic for no reason um so that's really stupid um number two is this X1 this car sucks it absolutely sucks it's there's zero enjoyment in driving it and it's a net negative experience to be driving this car um it's terrible I would never recommend that anyone buy this it's older too so you don't have to worry about that but if new x1's or anything like this I would say stay the hell away um and that's not cuz I'm against BMW our our SUV is a BMW so I like BMW but I don't like whatever the hell this is it's trash um so it's un enjoyable to drive but the other thing that's really getting me this week it's really getting me is my wife was

sick all last week and she's still sick this week and um so I've been like cuz she's coughing all night and like I feel so bad for her cuz it's like I know she's losing sleep over it but but so am I and I'm like I'm sleeping in a different room because she's uh why the time her medicine wears off in the middle of the night for coughing She's coughing like in her sleep right so I'm sleeping in in another room and it's where our cats sleep at night and I love our cats but the past two nights I've had like zero sleep um I I missed CrossFit two mornings in a row because the on Monday so like Sunday night I I remember being in bed trying to go to sleep and like I I must have been like went to bed at 11:00

it was probably 12: or 1 and I was like there's no way I'm going to CrossFit in the morning like these cats have kept me up kind of in and out of sleep and the same thing happened last night so I like I woke up at 5: so that I could you know get ready to go to CrossFit and I remember like waking up and being like no it's there's absolutely no way that I could go and I know when I've not slept enough enough I mean there's a lot of signs but the front of my head it's not quite a headache but it feels like it feels like my temples are like heavy so there's like a pressure and it kind of feels like they're they're heavy for me and like I'm probably going to get home eat uh and I probably need to

to sleep like either take a I probably got to take a nap and then go to B early as well so which is really crappy because I mean for a whole bunch of reasons but the the side effect of of not sleeping properly like this is like I've missed CrossFit now two mornings in a row and as someone who used to be into bodybuilding like not going to the gym sucks but now I'm also so I'm missing the gym and now I'm giving up like my own personal time cuz I have to like sleep when I could either be productive or relaxing so I can't like if I was like oh I want to play video games tonight or I want to just like kick back and like kind of veg out like no I I have to go put myself to sleep to try

and make up for it and I like that drives me nuts uh but I don't think I have a choice I think I have to nap when I get in I'm getting hard heartburn this is a second day in a row I got really bad heartburn so I'm going to nap when I get home and then try to be productive for a bit and then go to bed early try to go to bed at 10:00 maybe so then I can actually go to CrossFit tomorrow but you know what that means probably more code commute videos it's interesting I've been trying to um this is an interesting channel for me to run because my primary one Dev leader has I mean at the time of recording has like 8,500 followers or subscribers on YouTube uh it's been about 2 years of doing that uh which I

actually feel like that's incredibly slow growth like I have hundreds of videos I think there's over 400 videos on my other channel and and there's 8,500 subscribers okay and there's some days where I'll put out a video and I'll get like 60 views on a day with 8,500 subscribers what I feel like are useful tutorial videos they're professionally edited I have thumbnails done for them so they literally cost me money and my time and then I sit in this car I sit in this car and rant about software engineering and all of my YouTube metrics on this channel are like double or triple per video what I'm getting on my primary one which is like insane and and that's I think I talked about this before but that's like not to say that it's because this Channel's doing so amazing I think it's because like

my other channel is just stalled it feels so bad um so I I'm not going to give up on dev leader that's my that's my baby but like man it's uh it's super demotivating to to put so much effort into that stuff and then it's like say in a month just to give you an idea say in a month it cost me between $500 and $1,000 to have videos edited and thumbnails made on that channel okay just for for context depending on how many videos I put out between 500 and 1,000 bucks and every day on that channel I think I finally made it up to making $3 a day so let's round up let's say from all of my hard work my ad revenue on Google gets me $100 a month which is cool by the way because it used to be zero so

it's cool I finally have made it to a point where it's about $100 a month it's no longer $1 a day it's three but I'm still losing like $400 to $900 a month on that channel so uh it feels very bad and then there's this one where I'm like I'm just like I said ranting and then more people are watching it so like it's way more motivating to make videos on this channel cuz I'm like oh people are actually watching it like awesome people are actually sending in messages cuz they want me to talk about stuff awesome like let's keep doing that um but got to keep both going so that's how it is but I'm just about home here got to put down the window so I can back this thing up let's see oh yeah we're good yeah I guess I will leave

it there folks um we'll be back in the car soon fortunately by the end of the week for sure so I will see you later and just a friendly reminder that if you have other topics and stuff you want me to go through like I said comment below or find me Dev leader on any social media just send them in a DM say you want it Anonymous and we'll chat through it thanks and I'll see you next time