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What I wish I knew before
becoming a manager in
tech
Vojtěch Vondra
@vvondra
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● “Managing people can’t be that hard.”
● “My boss has no idea what they’re doing.”
● “If they let me, I could do a better job than them.”
● “Managers are useless, we’d be so much faster without
them”
Me, some years ago, as an engineer
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Expectation
time
skill
Bam!
Became an Engineering Manager
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Reality
time
skill
Perhaps Senior Engineer,
but Junior Manager
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in other words: I still don’t fully understand what the
role is about
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Relying on past accomplishments and technical
authority within your current team...
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...won’t really work if you switch jobs.
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Your past engineering skills are a great crutch to start...
...but very quickly start working on dropping them.
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Old hard skills
not as useful anymore
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Learning as a developer
Source
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Learning as a manager
Radical Candor
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Learning as a manager
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Understand your company’s and your role’s setup
100%
Coding
100%
People/Org
Mgmt
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Understand your own motivation
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Humble up ASAP
and study management as a hard-skill
For a long time, I dismissed
resources I could learn from as
too vague and general
I could also appreciate some
books and trainings only after
having past experience I could
relate to
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Don’t try to figure it out alone
Mentoring
Coaching
Discussion
groups
all have
great ROI
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Let’s work together
on becoming
better managers!
Thanks! Questions?