[vi-mode]

OT: for those who have never been in leader/managerial positions:

- Leading people is 1000x less fun than coding

- Leading people makes your more money than as an avg coder

- Leading people too long makes you lose your technical skills slowly

- At some age and for most, there's no other option than leading, 'go or grow'

- Leading bigger headcounts is comparable to competitive sports 24/7 and shouldn't be underestimated

[burlesona]

1000x less fun? That’s extremely subjective, and depends enormously on what you draw satisfaction from. Leading people can be a lot of fun if you genuinely care about the people you are leading and take joy from empowering and enabling them to grow and succeed.

[vi-mode]

Yes and no. You can move mountains with good teams, this is great and you will draw satisfaction from. But IDK if you had ever 100+ people in your reporting line for a longer time. Then you knew that it's everything BUT definitely not a lot of fun. It's super hard work and will push you and your mind dangerously to the limit.

[thewanisdown]

It's a different mindset, but I still think it's fun. For me, the key with that size of a group was focusing on the development of the leaders under me. When I make sure they are set up for success, things go smoothly.

The hardest time in my life was trying to micromanage a large group. Once you let go, and focus on the bigger picture, it's quite fun. Challenging, for sure, but very fun.

[vi-mode]

Hint: you should never frame your reports in such a way ('leaders under me'), 101 of leadership; but let's move on: I think we are not talking about the same; managing people has no short-term feedback loops like coding, it can be fun yes but many confuse this fun with the status involved; from a rational perspective and with the experience of heading larger headcounts (did you lead 100+ teams for a longer time?) paired with hitting ambitious org goals, I find it hard to call 'managing people' fun.

[thewanisdown]

Holdover from the military. I can see you're framing it as "beneath", which would be very inappropriate, but it references "under your charge". Thanks for pointing out that it could be misconstrued.

I am sorry to hear you have not enjoyed your time leading a large group. It certainly has its challenges, but I assure you it can be quite fun and rewarding.

[vi-mode]

This is getting a bit too deep now. I didn't say that I didn't enjoy it. I like challenges, my initial notion was just to express that words like 'fun' are far away from what leadership is. Btw, you didn't answer the question if you led 100+ people for a longer time. Besides and no offense, military, authoritative leadership styles might not be the right approach in tech environments (like those where engineers work).

[Impossible]

What is the proper way to frame reports? "leaders reporting to me", "managers I manage"?

[thewanisdown]

DNA evidence works well.

In all seriousness, I recommend not referring to them as "reports" at all. Call them "My Team", "us", "we". It creates a sense of collective ownership.

When talking up, I use specific names, or "the team" to reference tasks or successes, and "I" when we talk about failures. I own what goes wrong, they own what goes right.

[vi-mode]

Just reports. The ones directly reporting to you are called 'direct reports'. Latter also implies a bigger headcount and that the direct reports are managers themselves. So if you have a small, flat team you call your direct reports just reports.

[radiator]

I for one think the expression 'leaders under me' is clear, accurate and inoffensive to anyone.

[UncleMeat]

Okay. And lots of people don't find grabbing tickets and coding all day to be a lot of fun.

Management is work. But so is coding. Some people prefer one. Some people prefer the other.

[vi-mode]

Um. Most people never managed many other people, how should they know what they prefer?

[UncleMeat]

I've managed other people and find it more fun than coding. You do you.

[crimsonalucard]

100+ people doesn't scale. This is not how you lead. You need to form a pyramid structure or your leadership won't be effective.

[vi-mode]

You think I meant 100 direct reports? Without any structure?

[crimsonalucard]

No. But 100 in your direct line doesn't scale. These people should be invisible to you.

It would be impossible for someone to be CEO of say Google under your logic.

[enraged_camel]

I don't see this as subjective, because dealing with computers and technology is a fundamentally different type of activity, and requires a totally different set of skills, than dealing with people. If you're the type of person who enjoys the former, I think it's safe to say you won't enjoy the latter much, at least not at first.

[mandelbrotwurst]

> dealing with computers and technology is a fundamentally different type of activity, and requires a totally different set of skills, than dealing with people.

Sure.

> If you're the type of person who enjoys the former, I think it's safe to say you won't enjoy the latter much

This seems like a bit of a leap. People can be good at and enjoy things that are very different.

[vi-mode]

Yes but the context here is coder transforms to manager. And coders got coders because they like short feedback-loops.

[mettamage]

Nope, I became a coder because I want to be able to create apps that I have in my head. I hated coding for the first 6 months (I'm on year 8 now). Now I like it, but I'm still not passionate about it.

My passion is about digital creation.

I think I'd like being a manager, depending on the context. Since I like to talk and listen to people their ideas and get energy from talking and listening.

I don't get energy from coding. I do get energy from creating something awesome (either myself or with a team).

[vi-mode]

Nice that you told us the story why you got into coding. I just tried to find an abstraction for the sake of simplicity. Of course we had all our triggers why we got into coding. And of course we had some specific end goal like you had but the actual activity of coding is about short feedback loops. Something which many professions lack. If you didn't like short feedback-loops you wouldn't code for 8 years.

[com2kid]

> If you're the type of person who enjoys the former, I think it's safe to say you won't enjoy the latter much, at least not at first.

I disagree, I volunteered (edit: to step up and take on) for a manager role and discovered I loved it. I really enjoy helping built teams and team culture, helping people learn and grow in their career and abilities, and working to coordinate work across multiple teams to get work done at a scale that I never could have as an IC.

Saying that people who enjoy coding don't like dealing with people is like saying people who enjoy painting won't like programming, it is a stereotype that is easily dis-proven by the existence of people who, in both cases, do enjoy both!

[vi-mode]

Managing people != dealing with people

This is the biggest misconception most have you have never led seriously. I like people, I like meeting people for a beer, for pair-programming, to date. Managing people is not about being with people.

[com2kid]

> This is the biggest misconception most have you have never led seriously.

As a manager, I managed my team, and dealt with a lot of other teams!

I was spending a good % of my time coordinating, organizing, and paving the way for my team to do good work. Ranging from ensuring the UI specs that got to them had been well vetted, to negotiating release schedules with other teams.

This extends even to engineering decisions. As an example, there were ways my team could implement a feature that'd save us time, but be harder for an upstream team to integrate with, or we could take more time implementing something to their requests at a cost to our schedule.

Balancing decisions like that is just as much talking to people in hallways between meetings as it is attending those meetings. It is forming relationships across an organization so that even when schedules get tight and times are tense, things don't get ugly.

[vi-mode]

Tbh, this sounds you like are heavily micromanaging your people because you don't have any task yourself. Did you ever got into 360 feedback? How was the outcome?

[ska]

On the other hand, an effective leader can

- usually tackle bigger problems/projects than they could ever address as an IC

- make sure their team isn't wasting time on the wrong things

- accelerate the development of inexperienced team members

- make sure that the team is more than the sum of it's parts; hopefully very much more

- avoid getting bogged down on technical details that will not be relevant for long. Some of the skills you had that will atrophy aren't very impactful, just necessary at the moment.

Some people will find those things rewarding, and may not find your 1000x factor at all realistic.

[vi-mode]

Sorry, but what you write could come from any of the millions of self-help leadership books or blog spam from the net. Random, generic advice. This is too simple for my taste and I am not talking about what effective leadership is. Maybe you talk about a first leadership experience or managing two interns and find this rewarding. Yes this is def fun.

[ska]

I was replying to something generic, balancing out the negatives a bit. I wasn't really talking about what can be effective, but what can be rewarding. YMMV of course.

The only reason I mentioned effective at all is that I don't think it is much fun to be a (knowingly) ineffective leader.

There is, in fact, fun to be found at every level. Perhaps not for every person, but that's life.

[vi-mode]

> There is, in fact, fun to be found at every level

Yes, but we are not on HN for such generic advice.

Early in my career I thought that leadership is the end goal and just great, nobody told me that it's a bit more complex. My initial comment just says, guys, it's not getting easier, it's getting harder, much harder. Now we can do a philosophical debate what is fun, what is rewarding, that challenges are rewarding (YES they are) but it's about the fact the managing people is not easy and shouldn't be underestimated, the reward structure is very different than coding and much more complex than eg a k8s cluster.

I mean just check Glassdoor and how many people there hate their boss. It's so easy to f*ck up an org if you haven't any experience.

[GnarfGnarf]

Right on. I'm 71, self-employed, successfully evaded management, have coded all my life and would never have done otherwise.

I have managed fellow coders, but always had my hands in the coding jar. I continue to innovate, and hope to be coding the week I shuffle off this mortal coil.

[vi-mode]

Wow, what's your stack?

[GnarfGnarf]

Sorry, I just saw your question.

I do old school desktop, C++, some C#, Win32. Just converted to macOS through Qt.

My target market is firmly entrenched in desktop, for technical and political reasons. I have Web-based versions of my app using REST, XML, and JSON, but they only constitute 3% of my sales.

I switched from COBOL and mainframe Assembler to C in 1988.

[Aperocky]

What are your opinions on autonomous team members? I understand that organization is important, but is it possible to have an organization with minimum red tape by setting goals and let team autonomously execute? Would that reduce management burden?

[chillydawg]

In an org of any non trivial size, no it won't work and it will increase management burden long term because it will damage things. As teams grow, supervision and communication get non linearly harder and less efficient. If you give some rogue the root keys and carte blanche, they may well get sh*t done but will also, almost certainly, cause a lot of problems for others.

Discipline, good hiring practice and clear goals and accountability at all levels are what's needed.

[0xdeadbeefbabe]

I don't see much discipline, good hiring practice, or clear goals in history. Why would it suddenly help now?

[maerF0x0]

> - Leading bigger headcounts is comparable to competitive sports 24/7 and shouldn't be underestimated

Would you please expand on this point? What do you mean and how so?

[ryanelfman]

Great summary

[zooweemama]

spot on!