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If you are looking for a smooth transition, get on a large team that is under-managed (say, >14 people and only one manager/tech-lead), and in addition to doing
by jqgatsby 9y ago
If you are looking for a smooth transition, get on a large team that is under-managed (say, >14 people and only one manager/tech-lead), and in addition to doing your regular tasks, start getting heavily involved in sprint planning and technical & product specs. Gradually do more and more of that and less individual work. Voila, you are a manager!
- ChicagoDave 9y agoI think this is the primary path to management.
- JimboOmega 9y agoWhen I tried this, what happened was one of the engineers who didn't want to manage, but had been around longer than me, got promoted - and I got moved on to his team. People came to me expecting me to be leading the team (or at least know what's going on), but I suddenly got cut out of doing that. It was chaos. The person who was selected as lead left a month later, since they weren't that interested in doing it anyway. The powers that be still didn't let me lead the team, though by that point attrition had gotten so high, it kind of didn't make sense. (There wasn't really a team to lead). The team before that was a similar deal (chosen lead quit not too long after) but I got made a lead... of a team with two people on it (including me). The company went basically bankrupt, and having only 6 months experience with 1 report didn't impress people. I don't think being a trans woman helps. I really do try; I come up with new initiatives, I follow through on them, I give talks to educate the team, but in the end, I'm always waiting some number of years for the next magical re-org, which may or may not go my way.