9 Comments

I feel like the 1s are a description of me (all 1s). I think I can survive being a manager (already I am dev lead which is close enough), but long term probably it isnt for me. I would not be happy if all I do is deal with people all day long and not tech.

On the other hand, at the place I work, I feel like developers are 2nd or even 3rd rate citizens: people act like being managers and in meetings the whole day is what work is about; anything else is of lesser value.

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All ones is exactly the place you are at - people who are not satisfied with just coding, but probably want to stay close to it. Sounds like you are at the right role, but maybe not at the right company 😅

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Love the mini survey. I do think that engineers, especially at senior levels, do need to be able to handle chaos and make technology / architectural decisions.

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I think that they also have to be able to have 1:1s with people and get out of the basement 😂

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💯

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Loved the post and proof I should continue to explore the idea of becoming a manager 😄.

Thanks as well for the mention on my recent post ❤️

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I can't wait for hearing about your management experiences once it happens (imo it's a when, not 'if'). Will definitely interview you for Leading Developers 🙃

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I love this survey!

Having worked as a coach with Entrepreneurs, I'd wish someone would create a similar survey for entrepreneurs.

Back to managers though, I see the need to become a manager for career advancement a serious obstacle to the growth of specialists, as many get stuck on the management oath way too early, and forget their specialist background. This leads to a command and control and often lack of enough experience to lead other specialists. In software this is even more evident because of the rapid pace of tech evolution (frameworks, languages or even tech like AI).

Hope this leads to an upcoming "how to become a better tech lead" series of posts! 👌😉

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Maybe you can build one for entrepreneurs :)

I agree about the management focus too early being a problem, but there is also the opposite case - people feeling not confident enough to become managers (unfortunately from my experience it was mostly women). Being a better IC is an endless chase.

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