Developers who became project managers / owners, why did you do it and how to?
2 comments
Not the answer you are looking for, but still my $0.02. It's pretty negative though, feel free to ignore all this.
I have been a freelance developer for over 20 years, more often than not hired in a senior position. I have had my share of offers to take up a management role, and I have declined this every single time. I have too often seen developers move up in the hierarchy to become pretty miserable after the dust has settled. Some of the complaints I have heard is how they hate to be responsible for other people's work and potential failures. How they hate to end up doing meetings and more meetings. How they hate to lose the creative part of their job and be left with what feel like only the administration. How they hate to lack clear and exact goals. How they hate having to hire and fire people all the time. And most important: how they hate ending up with much more stress than they had before because of the increased responsibilities.
Of course, this is highly subjective; some people do become managers after a developer career, are good at it and love it. These might even end up being the best managers in the field because of their developer history. But I will try to avoid ending up in management as long as I can keep ahead of the kids in my developer role.
> found most project managers lives look quite easy compared to what we devs have to do with.
I have heard managers say exactly the opposite, so this is probably also a case of the grass being greener on the other side of the fence...
I have been a freelance developer for over 20 years, more often than not hired in a senior position. I have had my share of offers to take up a management role, and I have declined this every single time. I have too often seen developers move up in the hierarchy to become pretty miserable after the dust has settled. Some of the complaints I have heard is how they hate to be responsible for other people's work and potential failures. How they hate to end up doing meetings and more meetings. How they hate to lose the creative part of their job and be left with what feel like only the administration. How they hate to lack clear and exact goals. How they hate having to hire and fire people all the time. And most important: how they hate ending up with much more stress than they had before because of the increased responsibilities.
Of course, this is highly subjective; some people do become managers after a developer career, are good at it and love it. These might even end up being the best managers in the field because of their developer history. But I will try to avoid ending up in management as long as I can keep ahead of the kids in my developer role.
> found most project managers lives look quite easy compared to what we devs have to do with.
I have heard managers say exactly the opposite, so this is probably also a case of the grass being greener on the other side of the fence...
Topics I have come to associate with the term “management”. You say “project,” yet really you probably mean team/people/product.
Consider if you love writing as much as coding. If you don’t like documentation, and thinking of “the document” as a product then you might question your true motive. By document I don’t mean API specs and user help, I mean written account. Every email is a document. Every request should be a tiny self contained document.
Can you tell people what to do without sounding like you’re telling people what to do? People are far more complicated assets to manage than technology.
Good project management is coding your way through the minds of people. So everyone’s minds are synchronized while each individually works their way through their part of a grand unified whole.
And being accountable!
Most like to be told what is needed and measure performance on how well that is accomplished. Project/team/product managers fail when their product fails due to under-sight, oversight, miscommunication by others, even failure to foresee how stakeholders miscomprehend their own requirements.
So the move isn’t only doing your job in more abstract ways, it becomes doing the preparation for everyone else’s work in often thankless and undervalued ways!
These things may have occurred to you in some form, though it is easy to underestimate the hassle of being responsible for others!
Consider if you love writing as much as coding. If you don’t like documentation, and thinking of “the document” as a product then you might question your true motive. By document I don’t mean API specs and user help, I mean written account. Every email is a document. Every request should be a tiny self contained document.
Can you tell people what to do without sounding like you’re telling people what to do? People are far more complicated assets to manage than technology.
Good project management is coding your way through the minds of people. So everyone’s minds are synchronized while each individually works their way through their part of a grand unified whole.
And being accountable!
Most like to be told what is needed and measure performance on how well that is accomplished. Project/team/product managers fail when their product fails due to under-sight, oversight, miscommunication by others, even failure to foresee how stakeholders miscomprehend their own requirements.
So the move isn’t only doing your job in more abstract ways, it becomes doing the preparation for everyone else’s work in often thankless and undervalued ways!
These things may have occurred to you in some form, though it is easy to underestimate the hassle of being responsible for others!
I found most project managers lives look quite easy compared to what we devs have to do with.
I might make the transition but I'm also curious as to how did you guys do it and did it improve your life? How is your workload? How would a senior dev move to full-on project management?