Switching To The DARK SIDE - Becoming An Engineering Manager

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all right I think I fixed the microphone but we'll find out certainly the video that I did earlier today it is not fixed it sounds like absolute trash um which sucks because I hate fighting with microphone stuff uh I'm done the work day uh didn't commute earlier because it wasn't an office day but I didn't go to CrossFit either so let's explain in the other video but anyway um I wanted to do one more quick one um just so I can get through some questions and stuff and then tomorrow hopefully I do go to CrossFit I'll have a drive we'll be back in the car um but I'm also behind on YouTube videos so I'm trying to get myself in the zone for trying to get some stuff recorded today my voice actually sounds better at the end of the day today so I think

I'm in the clear finally I know earlier this morning I was still coughing a little bit but we'll see um the question that came in was uh from da q4r and they said out of curiosity how old were you when you transition from an IC to a manager what were some of the factors at play when you made the decision I think this one's an interesting one uh my I'll get into my experience it's going to be uh it's definitely unique so when I talk about this it's not necessarily me saying and here's what you should expect because I think that uh it's pretty pretty uncommon um not impossible obviously I did it and it's not because I'm special I think it's just the circumstances so I'll share that uh I wanted to remind folks um if you have questions leave them in the comments

I am like I literally have it pulled up on my screen at home uh I've been trying to pull them up in the car before I go to drive I will go through them I will answer them if you are not comfortable leaving a comment because it's something more indepth or you want to make sure that you remain completely Anonymous look for Dev leader on social media send me a message if it's on Instagram if it's on X LinkedIn whatever you want um I have a LinkedIn premium account so you should be able to message me I think um it's not restricted so please do that more detail you provide the more I can answer um at least the context right so that's I think valuable and then a reminder because if you like this kind of stuff uh my main Channel Dev leer on Mondays I do live streams so Mondays at 700 p.m.

Pacific I should be able to do that this Monday because it's not holiday yet um so I'll probably do that so uh if you want to know what I'm talking about on the live stream Saturdays I send out a newsletter it's at weekly. deev leader.com how old was I uh how do I do the math on this so it would have been basically at the either at the end of 2012 SL the beginning of 2013 and so that is 23 24 uh kind of range um but really what like so I had a five-year University degree program and then as soon as I graduated was working for a couple months at this startup before I transition into a management role and um so for me like obviously that's that's very early in a career to to do that um and I tried to hint at

this at the beginning of the video it's not because like I'm so amazing or so good at management and I always have been or whatever it's literally was at a startup and they're like we're hiring more people and um we need someone to be able to do this kind of thing and literally was talked to and they said you seem to be able to talk to the other developers well like you seem to be a you know good people person is of interest and I literally not having any idea what I'm doing I'm just like sure because in my mind at a startup and the way that I saw things going was like if this is what the business needs I'll do whatever right like we're we're already all doing whatever so this just kind of to me felt like one more thing like hey

this has got to get done we need help with it can you do it I'm like I have no idea what to do but sure like if you think that I can help put my name down and we'll get it figured out right so that's kind of like for me how it started it wasn't and and this is I wanted to call this out specifically so that maybe we can transition the the conversation a little bit but it wasn't me going oh you know what I've been in the industry 10 years and I think it's time for a different type of challenge based on my experiences and I want to move into management seems like a natural path like absolutely not for me at least right was very much just like I have no idea what's going on but you seem to to think that

I can do it and from a business perspective you need it so let me try and um and I will say like in the beginning I was definitely not good at it I like to imagine that I you know I I do try my my best as an engineering manager so I like to think that I'm doing a good job could I do better absolutely am I the best absolutely not and I'm okay admitting that I think that I I can definitely say that I I try and I'm always trying to get better right so um early on I had no idea what I was doing I'm still learning things today but especially when you're put into that position and this is this is actually a very common thing in general for you know software developers that kind of transition into management quickly whether that's

because a situation like mine where it's like High were a startup uh everything's going so fast no one knows what's going on like buckle up and put your management hat on if that happens or another common this is the most common thing I would probably say is hey you're an engineer and you're doing well so we're going to promote you into a management position and um that one's pretty pretty rough um because if someone's not even interested in management like they don't have a a knack for it they don't like they don't like sort of working with people all day or they're not prepared to to sort of deal with people challenges and focus on people all day they will struggle and they will struggle especially because what they've been rewarded for constantly is their individual contributions you write awesome code you've been a great

architect you do all of these Tech very technical things very well and you're very proficient at them so we're going to make sure that you're in charge of people now it's kind of weird right like uh I get that it seems like a promotion but it's actually it is very much a lateral move I think what happens though is in many of these situations they couple together a promotion like oh we'll give you more responsibilities and we will bump your pay and give you a title now you're a manager um it might be a promotion in your case but uh in my opinion it is very much a lateral move because it's a different set of skills and responsibilities so um I was completely unaware of this now another difference for me that's a little bit unique and I would say it's again it's not

like impossible it's not like this never happens but uh especially being at a startup it was kind of like well we you can't just stop coding because we also need you to do that and in my head I was like yeah I know cuz like we're building all these things like we got to keep going so I will keep coding so I for my eight years at Magnet forensics I was developing software so writing the code and managing the teams uh not all the teams obviously but managing the teams that I had so uh I I juggled both of those things four eight years and I wanted to talk about this a little bit because the second part of of Dave's question here is what were some of the factors of play when you made the decision so if I talk about like how I

became a manager like the factors are pretty limited it was just like you need it to happen like sure but the other part here that I'm I'm trying to talk through is like I was also an individual contributor at the same time I was writing code with my teams and managing them so I hadn't fully made a decision yet right and I I've talked about this before I had an amazing HR leader um you know I feel like I feel like a lot of by I don't know like a lot of my leadership Focus I think comes from from things that she she taught taught me and taught others um I actually think a lot of how I how I navigate things is is due to my mother um but at least in a business context uh and and focusing on individuals and stuff like

that uh this HR leader I I would attribute a lot of my style to like how she kind of imparted her wisdom and she would ask me very regularly have you you know have you been thinking about this like are you thinking about you know doing you want to go back to doing you know software development as your full-time Focus are you kind of thinking people management full-time focus and I would tell her like this what happened multiple times a year for almost eight years and I'm like I don't know like things are okay like I don't do I have to pick and she's like no you don't so I'm just asking to see like you know if you're kind of feeling things out and didn't know I had no idea and I think one of the challenges was was that I was still doing

so much individual contribution and having a lot of success with that so it made it difficult that if I could go you know work and and I worked a lot right so if I could just go work more and make more time to make all these things happen then the end result was that they would happen and there was some success that would follow so it would be like hey like I could just go code more and then I would kind of get that um you know the reward of having landed more features and worked on products and stuff so that was a positive reinforcement I'm going to keep doing it so what happened though and this is again about an age and a like some of the factors is that by the time was probably in the SE like in the seventh year for

sure maybe at the end of the sixth year at Magnet forensics certainly in my you know I was there for eight years so in that final year um I can say with certainty that I had reached a point where I felt that my contributions as someone leading and managing had now outpaced any individual contribution I could have and it kind it happened just sort of naturally over time right like I was reaching a point where in order for me to get the most value out of my day what I needed to do was ensure that I was spending time with other people whether that was leading and managing my team if that was helping out on Partner teams if that was helping individuals on other teams become more effective I spent my time doing that and got like and sort of realized significantly more impact

but it took me that long now what I cannot say for certain is like did it take that long for me to have that level of influence to be comfortable doing that to find those opportunities or is it possible that if I would have said you know a year two three four years prior I'm just going all in on management I will not be writing code anymore I'm I don't know if I would have done that would I have started to have seen these other types of impacts sooner I have no idea it's not not a regret it's not something like oh I wish I would have no idea I can't say for certain but I am happy with sort of the the path that it took um you know the fact that I I I maintained individual contribution while managing teams for that long

I think gave me a lot of insight I think in terms of how I again like management style and stuff like I can I can relate a lot to the software Developers because not only was I for my entire beginning of my management career the first eight years Not only was I writing code every day like to this day I don't write code at Microsoft now but I write code every single day outside of work so I still spend time actually building software writing code and I don't I don't think that that's a requirement for managers I don't think that's a requirement for a manager to be successful but that is something that I have relied on personally and it's allowed me to feel more comfortable me to feel more relatable when I'm building uh you know relationships with team members to make sure that

they trust and they respect me because I know what like I know what I'm talking about because I do write code right there's going to be obviously parts of the code basic I don't know them because I'm not writing code there but if someone needed me to jump into something like I had to do a one1 today and uh at the end of it someone was saying hey like could you help me with this and like I literally don't know any part of that code base but like let's pull it up like I can look through code with you right I might not be able to tell you oh go to line 37 you're like obviously it's this method blah blah blah I actually had two calls like this today and we were going through code code I had never seen before but I could

still have a conversation with them about like things that I would go check for where I might try to look for stuff who to go talk to so I would say like if I didn't spend as much time as I do programming outside of work these days I would be nervous at that skill would fall off for me and it's something that I rely on I have worked with managers that don't have coding skills and some of them are amazing some of them are terrible I don't think it's a requirement I think just being able to communicate clearly at different technical levels is is important so um to to maybe wrap up this video though um I think the last thought I wanted to have was around like so they're asking me how old I was when I transitioned when I so I would have

been 23 24 and after so right around 30 it's kind of like when I was like ah I think I think I'm having more impact as a manager it's right at the tail end and that's why when I was looking uh you know when I was applying to Microsoft and to to Google to Facebook and I was applying to these big tech companies I only applied for management roles I had said you know what like I this is what I do now and I I've said this before too if I would have stayed at that company longer at Magnet um I like I was in the in the process of like they didn't really have a title that would make sense at the time because it hadn't built out the career uh like sort of structure or ladder in terms of roles but they didn't

have like a technical director role but that would have been sort of what was coming next um so would have been on path for that I don't know like if I would have stayed there the whole the whole time instead of going to Microsoft depending on how thing if I would have continued on that trajectory is it possible that I would have had a VP role I don't know perhaps uh they they went through a lot of restructuring and stuff because they they went public and they went went back to private so like it's it's really difficult to say but at least at a director level role um so for me like that was that was the path right so I I knew I wanted to give two answers to this this question right like first one is like it kind of happened right away

maybe a little bit coincidental and then by the time I actually had a good feel for it around 30 some of the factors uh that I when I actually knew that I wanted to stick with management was that the impact that I was having uh from working with others and enabling them to be more effective I I finally felt like that was outpacing my own individual contributions and something that I actually get a lot of fulfillment from and this is why I make videos like this on coach commute why I have my Dev leader YouTube channel why I post so much on social media and try to help as much as I can in terms of free content and stuff is that I genuinely feel good when I'm able to help that's just kind of how it is right so um I feel like as

a manager when I'm able to do that for other people I can help them with their challenges I can help them grow in their career like that makes me feel good I do wonder if someone said hey look if you had to manage you can manage teams but even outside of work you could never program again like I really had to pick about how I you know between these two things I don't know if I could give up programming to be honest so if it wasn't specifically work or outside of work if someone said you can either in your life manage people or code I think I would probably pick code to be honest because I love writing code but from a career perspective I feel that I have more impact um and it it's a sort of a a feel-good thing for me to

be able to help others so I hope that answers the question that's my my take on it um you know I I just want to remind people that management and uh and software development like they are very different roles um so if you're in a spot the company you're at if the only way to sort of get promoted is to be a manager um I feel like that's kind of like kind of risky um because you may be like it just might not be for you like if you don't like the the responsibilities that managers have like then don't do it like go find somewhere where you can still excel at being an individual uh contributor um because they're different skill sets but anyway hope that helps hope that answers the question something to think about my experience will very likely be very different than

yours um doesn't mean it's better or worse it just means that we all have different paths that we take so hearing different perspectives I think is valuable but please do not try to compare um because there's not like a right or a wrong way that these things happen so use the perspective as Insight but forward your own journey and uh I wish you success if you're going the management path and if you're not I wish you success as well it's many different ways to be successful here you just have to put in the work take care and I'll see you next time