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This reflects my feelings very accurately. I’ve spent most of my career as a high performing IC, and I absolutely loved the feeling of creating new things and e

This reflects my feelings very accurately. I’ve spent most of my career as a high performing IC, and I absolutely loved the feeling of creating new things and exploring new ideas, getting deep into both the technical side of the problem and the understanding the business domain and seeing the system come together. Helping other people grow has also been important to me. Mentorship and teaching have always been things I prioritized. When I moved into a management role a couple of years ago it was because I’d done the principal level IC thing before where I was extremely cross-functional and I wanted to try focusing on a specific part of the business and a specific team of people and try to grow them. I wanted to grow vertically rather than horizontally. I think I’m a pretty good manager, based on feed back from my team and my peers, but the reality is that it’s enormously more draining than I ever imagined and there’s very little to concretely feel satisfied about at the end of a given day. When I became a manager I thought I’d just code in my spare time since I wouldn’t be coding at work, but in reality I’m far far more burned out from any given day of management than I ever was from the most stressful day as an IC. It’s hard to find the motivation after work, and I worry about my skills slipping over time. In an abstract sense it feels good to see a product grow, and to grow a team, but practically speaking none of the success is mine. Every good thing that gets done is thanks to the people on my team. Their growth and accomplishments are ultimately thanks to them. I facilitate, I give direction, I find alignment and build consensus, hopefully I make things easier- but I personally accomplish nothing. It feels like being stuck running at top speed on a treadmill going nowhere. Being a manager means taking on none of the credit when things go well, and all of the blame when things go poorly. Unfortunately, part of what got me into management at all was caring about the product and the people and no matter how much it sucks giving up and going back to an IC role seems worse. I don’t want to leave my team unsupported or risk them getting a worse manager, and I don't want to see the product my team owns fail due to a lack of leadership. I’m hopeful that in a few more years with more experience I’ll figure out ways to be happier with the situation, and until then I just try to remember that most people hate their jobs and I’m just lucky to have had almost 20 years of loving mine before moving into management.

bleakenthusiasm 2y ago
I feel like this is exactly what I'd be getting into if I had heeded the recent call at work to step up taking over the lead for my team. And there is one important factor in your answer that differs from most others here: You feel like any growth or progress someone else is making is coming purely from their own work and drive. I fully expect myself to do the same when managing people. But most answers here are different. They take pride and claim part of the success as theirs and looking at this from the IC's perspective, I don't disagree. Sure, there are people who go at this from a "you'd be nothing without me"-approach and that's not good either. But as manager of a team you can do a good and a bad job and good managers are so important for the team. You should learn to see your part in the team's success and your role in helping someone grow. I'm not sure how you change your mindset on this, but I think if you want to stick to management, that's your only way to make it work. And again - as an IC I believe it is justified. I've worked under good and bad managers and bad managers can ruin the job for the entire team while good managers don't just help you be more productive. They help you grow as a person and as a contributor and they enable the team to work on things that make an impact instead of burning up their energy with the thing that looks most fancy to leadership. I'm not sure if this is something everyone can get accustomed to see, but it is something that I see in some managers and I hope they can get their endorphins from it.
- rebeccaskinner 2y ago
  Logically I know you are right, the problem is feeling it. I do think I’ll get there in time. I doubt I’ll ever get the same rush I got from writing code, but hopefully I think I’ll find satisfaction at least.

bleakenthusiasm 2y ago

I feel like this is exactly what I'd be getting into if I had heeded the recent call at work to step up taking over the lead for my team. And there is one important factor in your answer that differs from most others here: You feel like any growth or progress someone else is making is coming purely from their own work and drive. I fully expect myself to do the same when managing people. But most answers here are different. They take pride and claim part of the success as theirs and looking at this from the IC's perspective, I don't disagree. Sure, there are people who go at this from a "you'd be nothing without me"-approach and that's not good either. But as manager of a team you can do a good and a bad job and good managers are so important for the team. You should learn to see your part in the team's success and your role in helping someone grow. I'm not sure how you change your mindset on this, but I think if you want to stick to management, that's your only way to make it work. And again - as an IC I believe it is justified. I've worked under good and bad managers and bad managers can ruin the job for the entire team while good managers don't just help you be more productive. They help you grow as a person and as a contributor and they enable the team to work on things that make an impact instead of burning up their energy with the thing that looks most fancy to leadership. I'm not sure if this is something everyone can get accustomed to see, but it is something that I see in some managers and I hope they can get their endorphins from it.

rebeccaskinner 2y ago
Logically I know you are right, the problem is feeling it. I do think I’ll get there in time. I doubt I’ll ever get the same rush I got from writing code, but hopefully I think I’ll find satisfaction at least.