[bsvalley]

Great advice from people here but I'm gonna try to provide as much value as I can on top of that. Read books, listen to others, get a mentor, blablabla. Do that for sure because it is the bare minimum. Unfortunately, this is not enough. Here is how an individual gets into management and becomes a great engineering manager (the "great" part is essential):

1- The individual would grab the most annoying task no one else wants to work on and would close it while staying positive

2- The individual is often used as the go-to person when a decision has to be made, or critical information is missing in a project

3- The individual has a great relationship with most of the people around (known as a friendly and respectful person)

4- The individual is wiling to help others behind the scene and doesn't look for any gratification other than making sure people learned something while being helped

5- The individual has made multiple decisions that appear to be great decision after all (probably the most important point).

If you fall into all this categories, you'll be just fine. It is a constant learning process as opposed to being an engineer. Why? because the process changes constantly, there's actually no process at all. If you learn a pattern, a language or a framework once, you can re-apply the same process for the new upcoming stuff. As a manager, every day is a new day. If you're a shark who produces a lot of output and burns a lot of relationships along the way, chances are, you'll most likely get promoted, but you'll fall into the large pool of bad managers. There are more bad managers than good managers out there. If you don't have the 5 qualities mentioned above, work on that prior to switching to management. That's my best advice.

[dominotw]

I've seen managers who become clueless as to what is happening in the industry and how things can be done better. They create a world where they are central figure and become highly resistant to change that would make them powerless. Managers who think their job is to "assign" task to ppl in JIRA. This creates a vicious cycle where motivated devs just leave the team and manager goes on to hire more 'yes men' until project dies and manager moves onto to a new company.

I've seen this happen so many times in my career. Ppl need to promote technically inclined ppl into managerial positions instead of focusing on solely 'ppl skills'.

[antaviana]

I agree. You have to be prone to optimize for others, rather than yourself. Also if you have the ability of good judgement, others will come to you for advice, somehow pushing you up.

I remember that in one of those "How to start and start up" videos, the presenter (CEO of an startup, do not remember which) was asked "How do find your generals in your team?".

His answer was something like "You look at the room and they are often surrounded by people at their place who came for advice".

[mholmes680]

I would also add (maybe this is #3+#4): networking is important and might come harder to some developers stuck in their own world.

Understand the needs and goals of your manager peers / team members / boss (360 degrees) so that you can come to mutually beneficial [financial] decisions.