> I am soul searching for a week now, and finally I got over my anger, disappointment and anxiety and ready to move on. Why would you be down on yourself? Man

> I am soul searching for a week now, and finally I got over my anger, disappointment and anxiety and ready to move on. Why would you be down on yourself? Many many developers at many companies are being laid as many companies are folding and many others are hanging on by their nails. This is the current economy. I have retained my job only, and I cannot stress this strongly enough, because I am lucky enough to work in an essential industry (banking). That's it. I don't know you, but I would place a hard bet that it has nothing to do with competence, capability, or performance. > I think I don't know how to be a leader at a workplace. I figured it out when it was dropped in my lap. My first time to really really own a large team as both a people and business leader was about 5 years ago. I was just some dumb army guy, but withing a short time frame the leaders around me moved on leaving me with 29 people to manage. I was told I did well and received letters of recommendation to pad my warrant office packet. The opportunity just dropped in my lap and I just performed as well as I could. My actual first time in management, this was military as well and was also not of my choosing, I was 24 years old and I only had two people working directly beneath me, but I had two business units that provided oversight for. In that role I mostly just ran operations. I was the managing technician in charge of operations for the 335th Theater Signal Command and ran all ops for all void and data communications in Iraq, Kuwait, and Afghanistan during the 2004 surge. I have never made it into management in the corporate world. Perhaps I am just waiting for it drop on me, which likely won't ever happen. The morale of my story is that you don't really know what kind of leader you will be until you are leading. The most important thing I learned about it is that if you take care of your people and ensure the mission always comes before you the people you manage will try harder to make you a success.