I always had a negative view of a management role. I didn’t think it was for me. I had trouble understanding what managers even did and how they created value.
Above all, I saw a manager role as a threat to what I love most: writing code.
But today, I became an engineering manager! What happened? This article is my attempt to document the twists and turns and mindset shifts that led me to management.
Why Did I Not Want To Be a Manager?
I have been fairly successful as a senior individual contributor. I had a track record of building products from scratch, some of which quickly generated $1M+ in annual recurring revenue.
I mention this not to brag but to explain where my deep-rooted beliefs about management came from. Building through code was my greatest lever for value generation. I didn’t see a point in doing something different, like being a manager.
In addition, every manager I had worked with did not write code, spent most of their time in meetings, and seemed disconnected from the code being built on the ground.
I didn’t understand what value managers added beyond operational stuff such as 1:1s, performance reviews, and process changes. It didn’t seem all that interesting to me.