He was only my manager for a year, when I started my current job. One of the things that made him so great is that he didn't need convincing about my competence

He was only my manager for a year, when I started my current job. One of the things that made him so great is that he didn't need convincing about my competence and ability to take on responsibility. He knew I wanted to do (more programming heavy tasks) and knew what needed to be done on the project, and gave me the kinds of tasks that formed my attitude and outlook on how we do things even now that he's gone years later. He didn't doubt my ability to do the job and set me up to take on a lot of responsibility. Specifically he showed me the importance of autotesting and set me up to take on the responsibility for maintaining and improving our autotesting framework and implementing our team-wide autotest policy. Since he was the TD on the project he was also able to give me the backing with the rest of the team to enforce some pretty strict policies, and that continued for the rest of the project even after he was gone. This became my area of special interest and expertise on the project even though it didn't fall into my original job description and helped me grow into the direction I wanted at the company. I think because this was so long ago and I only had him as a manager for maybe a year there may be things I'm viewing through rose-tinted glasses, but I still remember him as the best manager I've had.