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OT: for those who have never been in leader/managerial positions: - Leading people is 1000x less fun than coding - Leading people makes your more money than a
by vi-mode 7y ago
OT: for those who have never been in leader/managerial positions:
- Leading people is 1000x less fun than coding
- Leading people makes your more money than as an avg coder
- Leading people too long makes you lose your technical skills slowly
- At some age and for most, there's no other option than leading, 'go or grow'
- Leading bigger headcounts is comparable to competitive sports 24/7 and shouldn't be underestimated
- ryanelfman 7y agoGreat summary
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- burlesona 7y ago1000x less fun? That’s extremely subjective, and depends enormously on what you draw satisfaction from. Leading people can be a lot of fun if you genuinely care about the people you are leading and take joy from empowering and enabling them to grow and succeed.
- vi-mode 7y agoYes and no. You can move mountains with good teams, this is great and you will draw satisfaction from. But IDK if you had ever 100+ people in your reporting line for a longer time. Then you knew that it's everything BUT definitely not a lot of fun. It's super hard work and will push you and your mind dangerously to the limit.
- thewanisdown 7y agoIt's a different mindset, but I still think it's fun. For me, the key with that size of a group was focusing on the development of the leaders under me. When I make sure they are set up for success, things go smoothly. The hardest time in my life was trying to micromanage a large group. Once you let go, and focus on the bigger picture, it's quite fun. Challenging, for sure, but very fun.
- vi-mode 7y agoHint: you should never frame your reports in such a way ('leaders under me'), 101 of leadership; but let's move on: I think we are not talking about the same; managing people has no short-term feedback loops like coding, it can be fun yes but many confuse this fun with the status involved; from a rational perspective and with the experience of heading larger headcounts (did you lead 100+ teams for a longer time?) paired with hitting ambitious org goals, I find it hard to call 'managing people' fun.
- Impossible 7y agoWhat is the proper way to frame reports? "leaders reporting to me", "managers I manage"?
- vi-mode 7y agoJust reports. The ones directly reporting to you are called 'direct reports'. Latter also implies a bigger headcount and that the direct reports are managers themselves. So if you have a small, flat team you call your direct reports just reports.
- thewanisdown 7y agoDNA evidence works well. In all seriousness, I recommend not referring to them as "reports" at all. Call them "My Team", "us", "we". It creates a sense of collective ownership. When talking up, I use specific names, or "the team" to reference tasks or successes, and "I" when we talk about failures. I own what goes wrong, they own what goes right.
- vi-mode 7y agoHm, how should this work? If I'd ask you, 'How many direct reports do you have', what would you say? You need to use the term 'direct report' again. If you fuzzed around with 'my team' while I try to understand you team structure, your direct report count, their profile, which and how many reports they again have, you'd drive me nuts with a fake 'my team' humbleness. Using the term 'report' is absolutely ok, you shouldn't talk all day long of your reports of course or trying to impressive anyone.
- crimsonalucard 7y ago100+ people doesn't scale. This is not how you lead. You need to form a pyramid structure or your leadership won't be effective.
- vi-mode 7y agoYou think I meant 100 direct reports? Without any structure?
- crimsonalucard 7y agoNo. But 100 in your direct line doesn't scale. These people should be invisible to you. It would be impossible for someone to be CEO of say Google under your logic.
- UncleMeat 7y agoOkay. And lots of people don't find grabbing tickets and coding all day to be a lot of fun. Management is work. But so is coding. Some people prefer one. Some people prefer the other.
- enraged_camel 7y agoI don't see this as subjective, because dealing with computers and technology is a fundamentally different type of activity, and requires a totally different set of skills, than dealing with people. If you're the type of person who enjoys the former, I think it's safe to say you won't enjoy the latter much, at least not at first.
- mandelbrotwurst 7y ago> dealing with computers and technology is a fundamentally different type of activity, and requires a totally different set of skills, than dealing with people. Sure. > If you're the type of person who enjoys the former, I think it's safe to say you won't enjoy the latter much This seems like a bit of a leap. People can be good at and enjoy things that are very different.
- vi-mode 7y agoYes but the context here is coder transforms to manager. And coders got coders because they like short feedback-loops.
- mettamage 7y agoNope, I became a coder because I want to be able to create apps that I have in my head. I hated coding for the first 6 months (I'm on year 8 now). Now I like it, but I'm still not passionate about it. My passion is about digital creation. I think I'd like being a manager, depending on the context. Since I like to talk and listen to people their ideas and get energy from talking and listening. I don't get energy from coding. I do get energy from creating something awesome (either myself or with a team).
- vi-mode 7y agoNice that you told us the story why you got into coding. I just tried to find an abstraction for the sake of simplicity. Of course we had all our triggers why we got into coding. And of course we had some specific end goal like you had but the actual activity of coding is about short feedback loops. Something which many professions lack. If you didn't like short feedback-loops you wouldn't code for 8 years.
- Aperocky 7y agoWhat are your opinions on autonomous team members? I understand that organization is important, but is it possible to have an organization with minimum red tape by setting goals and let team autonomously execute? Would that reduce management burden?
- chillydawg 7y agoIn an org of any non trivial size, no it won't work and it will increase management burden long term because it will damage things. As teams grow, supervision and communication get non linearly harder and less efficient. If you give some rogue the root keys and carte blanche, they may well get sh*t done but will also, almost certainly, cause a lot of problems for others. Discipline, good hiring practice and clear goals and accountability at all levels are what's needed.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 7y agoI don't see much discipline, good hiring practice, or clear goals in history. Why would it suddenly help now?
- zooweemama 7y agospot on!
- maerF0x0 7y ago> - Leading bigger headcounts is comparable to competitive sports 24/7 and shouldn't be underestimated Would you please expand on this point? What do you mean and how so?
- ska 7y agoOn the other hand, an effective leader can - usually tackle bigger problems/projects than they could ever address as an IC - make sure their team isn't wasting time on the wrong things - accelerate the development of inexperienced team members - make sure that the team is more than the sum of it's parts; hopefully very much more - avoid getting bogged down on technical details that will not be relevant for long. Some of the skills you had that will atrophy aren't very impactful, just necessary at the moment. Some people will find those things rewarding, and may not find your 1000x factor at all realistic.
- vi-mode 7y agoSorry, but what you write could come from any of the millions of self-help leadership books or blog spam from the net. Random, generic advice. This is too simple for my taste and I am not talking about what effective leadership is. Maybe you talk about a first leadership experience or managing two interns and find this rewarding. Yes this is def fun.
- ska 7y agoI was replying to something generic, balancing out the negatives a bit. I wasn't really talking about what can be effective, but what can be rewarding. YMMV of course. The only reason I mentioned effective at all is that I don't think it is much fun to be a (knowingly) ineffective leader. There is, in fact, fun to be found at every level. Perhaps not for every person, but that's life.
- vi-mode 7y ago> There is, in fact, fun to be found at every level Yes, but we are not on HN for such generic advice. Early in my career I thought that leadership is the end goal and just great, nobody told me that it's a bit more complex. My initial comment just says, guys, it's not getting easier, it's getting harder, much harder. Now we can do a philosophical debate what is fun, what is rewarding, that challenges are rewarding (YES they are) but it's about the fact the managing people is not easy and shouldn't be underestimated, the reward structure is very different than coding and much more complex than eg a k8s cluster. I mean just check Glassdoor and how many people there hate their boss. It's so easy to f*ck up an org if you haven't any experience.
- GnarfGnarf 7y agoRight on. I'm 71, self-employed, successfully evaded management, have coded all my life and would never have done otherwise. I have managed fellow coders, but always had my hands in the coding jar. I continue to innovate, and hope to be coding the week I shuffle off this mortal coil.
- vi-mode 7y agoWow, what's your stack?
- GnarfGnarf 7y agoSorry, I just saw your question. I do old school desktop, C++, some C#, Win32. Just converted to macOS through Qt. My target market is firmly entrenched in desktop, for technical and political reasons. I have Web-based versions of my app using REST, XML, and JSON, but they only constitute 3% of my sales. I switched from COBOL and mainframe Assembler to C in 1988.