[dowager_dan99]

Where’s my dopamine? -> Your success is the teams' success. When they are doing well, you are doing well.

It's hard to get a dopamine hit of a second-order signal though. When you're a developer there's a strong linkage between the work you complete and results. If you write code for a new feature, you get to see it take shape on your screen. When your team reaches a milestone, you see where you contributed and can often quantify your contributions.What happens after you move into management? Your day-to-day is no longer filled with relatively concrete tasks and goals. Your role is not to do the work yourself but guide and support a team doing the actual execution. How do you measure that?

[ad_hockey]

Agreed. "Where's my dopamine" is the right way to describe it. As an IC I could find a bug, craft a test that reproduces it, write a fix, see the test go green, see the PR get approved and land... I'd get a little dopamine ping at each step. As a manager I'd have days where I had constructive 1:1s in the morning and maybe made a decision on some strategic or resourcing problem in an afternoon meeting. Of course I recognised that the work was not only valuable, but higher impact than just fixing a bug. But the direct hit in the pleasure receptors just wasn't there. I'd finish a day a like that and instead of feeling happy with my work, I'd just feel exhausted and not looking forward to the next day.

After a few years as a manager I switched back to the IC track. I sometimes wonder if my experience means I'm just hard-wired to be an IC, or if with more time and practice you can train yourself to get the dopamine feedback from management activities.

[ifthenelseor]

I'm still getting dopamine off getting a team member promoted, two years later. Every success they make reminds me that I helped them build that confidence and those skills. Manager-side successes might not be obvious and daily, but they have staying power like you wouldn't believe.