I’ve taken a meandering path in developer-adjacent roles: Engineering management, then product management (entirely different type of management), then adviser/

I’ve taken a meandering path in developer-adjacent roles: Engineering management, then product management (entirely different type of management), then adviser/consultant roles, and even years as a stay at home dad with some stints as an IC developer mixed in. When I talk to developers, a lot of them expect me to gush about how much better things are once you’re away from the code. The truth is that I frequently regretted not sticking with a basic software developer trajectory from the start. Management of any type is far more difficult than it appears from the outside. A huge part of my management jobs has been handling and hiding all of the problems that come up so that the team doesn’t have to deal with them. The better I’ve done my job, the easier it looks from the outside. My teams should never have to know about the difficult battles I’ve dealt with, down to some of the most bizarre and even scary personnel problems I’ve had to handle. Software development felt like the most difficult and least-appreciated job at the company when I was young, but after a tour of management positions I miss the days of being able to sit down with a team and solve hard problems in the code.