[hypesafe]

I am a new manager. I made the developer to manager transition 14 months back. Educating yourself with books and podcasts is nice, however do not spend too much time on these resources too soon. Without appropriate breadth of experience a lot of the advice might not seem actionable. My advice would be to aim to become a great new manager first. Becoming a great leader and manager is a function of experience and will come with time and patience.

My advice for a new manager would be:

1. Bootstrap by emulating your manager. As a new manager now is not the time to demonstrate your grasp of modern management literature. Pitching too many new management ideas too soon will slow you down. Start by emulating your manager. Copy her 1-on-1 cadence. Copy her team meeting cadence. Parrot her words in your own team meetings. Her style might not be the best - but it the style she is most familiar with and it gives her an opportunity to work with something familiar and hence comforting. Once you have a semblance of a track record - start evolving your own style.

2. Prioritize the tactical vs the strategic. The first 6-12 months are about building your credibility as a manager. You will build credibility by executing on the immediate needs of the org. So first 6 months should be about tactical execution - once your team starts getting better at executing dial down and delegate the tactical and start focusing on the strategic.

3. Try not to expand too fast. As a new manager it might be tempting to grab all the head count that comes your way. However without scalable processes in place you are likely to have a large but miserable team. Ensure that you have appropriate automation for tracking individual + project progress on a daily / weekly basis. Ensure that you are competent enough to derive high signal-to-noise ratio in your 1-on-1's with your directs.

4. Treat administrative / HR tasks with great seriousness. As an individual contributor your engineering tasks took priority. Do not be that manager who forgets to approve expenses, approve PTOs etc. Have a rock solid understanding of compensation and bonus structures, criteria for salary raises etc. Saying "Why don't you reach out to HR" is a great way for your directs to lose confidence in you.