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How to be the Boss Your Team Deserves: Stop Coding
- marcuscreo 13y agoSummary: If you're leading a development team, stop coding and focus on being a great boss!
- twiceaday 13y ago> and over the next 4 years I would _loose_ the “Junior” prefix
- GabrielF00 13y agoAlso: > others could use any lessor editor > spent nights and weekends readin the Progress 4GL manuals And that's just in the first two paragraphs.
- marcuscreo 13y agoGabrielF00, err... thanks. I clearly rushed to publish too soon.. ;-(
- GabrielF00 13y agoTo clarify, since you fixed one of these but not the other, a lessor is a landlord. Lesser means not as good.
- marcuscreo 13y agoThanks, and Fixed! I wasn't intending to crowd-edit, but appreciate the feedback!
- darkchasma 13y agoThe two tasks aren't mutually exclusive. If you can only do one, then that's fine, there isn't anything wrong with that. But leadership has nothing to do with a title, so if you weren't leading before you took a leadership role, then of course you're going to struggle.
- marcuscreo 13y agoIn more formal organizations, leadership is connected to title, from a "Formal authority" perspective. I can't imagine trying to be great at both cutting code and managing coders, so for me making the choice was necessary.
- kelnos 13y agoI'll preface this by saying that different companies have different management/team structures and expectations. So this draws from my own experience, and is likely a bit different than the OP's situation. In my particular case, I'm a team lead, but not a manager. My manager is also the direct manager of everyone on my team. He's the "people" manager, and spends no time coding. He's expected to be technical, but not actually build things. I would be very sad if I didn't get to write (production) code. It's just one of the things I want to do. But I also want to play a role in deciding what we build, as well as tackling architecture and design problems, which I can't do particularly effectively (if at all) as a non-lead. Having said that, I likely do code more than I should. I could be spending more time doing code reviews and helping the people on my team be more successful at what they're doing. I've been thinking about all this for a while, but I haven't really done much about it. Reading this article has given me a bit of a kick to revisit all this.
- marcuscreo 13y agoI understand completely. I was actually quite sad at first, and it took me about 9 months to make the mental transition. I also appreciated that being a Team Lead gave my design ideas a larger voice, and more credibility, than it had before. I spent time learning how to better sell my ideas, which ended up being a valuable skill as well. I'm glad you found it useful!
- nhance 13y agoThis has been one of the hardest moves to make. I love how you captured how difficult and scary it can be to make a move like this. Great article.
- marcuscreo 13y agoThanks!