Hey, what's up, John Sonmez from simpleprogrammer.com.
I got a question about management.
This is where software developers go to die.
Anyway, I’m going to summarize a little bit of this but I—let’s see here.
I’m trying to think about how to summarize this down.
Let’s just start from the beginning here.
He says, “I’m here writing you with a topic that I’ve never ever talked to anyone
about.
I’m getting sort of sick by being stressed and thinking about it all the time.
I’m turning to you for some advice and maybe I can finally settle and relax.
I’m 28.
I’ve been in software development for the past decade.
I started working with computers when I was 12.
I did major math in school then graduated with both bachelors and masters in computer
science.
I also hold an MBA and love economics and management.”
He goes on to say he’s done desktop and mobile development, been promoted to team
lead on software architecture and then one day everything changed.
“I was offered an upper management position in a different company and I accepted it.
All of a sudden I found myself doing zero coding and dealing with people and projects
on a daily basis instead.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m actually really good with people.
I’m a great leader and this isn’t something only I say but everyone else who’s every
worked for me.”
Okay.
“The problem is me though, I’m not sure if this is for me.
I’m not one of those people who would want to get into management for a bigger paycheck.
I want to be happy at my job and I feel like coding makes me feel happier.
I love creating solving problems and coding them.
On the other hand, I want to own my own business one day so basically I thought accepting this
offer would enable me to practice more people skills and gain experience in that direction.
It’s the dilemma that’s killing me.
Sometimes I felt like my development skills are not that great so maybe I’m better at
management.
Other times I just felt that I wanted to do coding because that’s what gets me excited.
I want to choose one and dive into the other but I can’t choose because it seems like
I’m sort of good at both.
I’m worried that one day I may realize that management is not really for me and then I
find myself distanced from coding and incompetent in the market.
In one hand, I want to be able to pass technical interviews if necessary.
On the other hand, I’m thinking I can pass managerial position if need be, right?
I’m stuck in the middle.”
I think this is a problem that a lot of people face in a lot of different ways, not just
this management thing.
Certainly in development space a lot of software developers become managers.
I did this to some degree.
Became a team lead and even as I started doing more in the Simple Programmer realm I was
coding less.
What I tried to do for a while is I tried to straddle the fence.
I tried to be like a—trying to do the management stuff and the leadership and business stuff
and trying to code at the same time and keeping my skills up in both and it’s exhausting
and it’s stressful and you can never devote your energy to one.
It didn’t’ work out.
I found, at least in my career, I would also get pulled into position stuff like mentorship
or leadership or teaching even though I just want to sit down and code.
Finally, I had to make the decision I had to say, “Look, I’m not going to be very
effective at either if I’m not willing to commit to one path.
If I keep on straddling this fence, if I keep on trying to keep up all my programming skills
and trying to make sure I’m coding 90% of my day but then I want to be in the leadership
and management positions or I want to do other things in the software development field then
I’m going to have to give up one.
I’m going to have to compromise on both of those.
This is what I would recommend that you do is you pick one.
You just decide am I going to go full into the management side or am I going to go full
into the coding side.
There’s career advancement in both.
I mean obviously you can go up in management and you can become an executive or you can
run your own business.
Or on the coding side you can become a senior fellow.
There’s a lot of companies that have high level architect positions and you can do that.
But what will suck and always torment you is if you don’t make this choice, if you
try to straddle this line.
We tend to try to hedge our bets and it’s not a good—you’ve got to take the risk.
You’ve got to go full into one.
You’re never going to be as best as you could, as good as you could if you’re never
playing full out.
You’ve got to play full out.
Figure out which one you’re going to do and it doesn’t matter which one you choose
but play it full out and don’t worry, don’t take the risk.
If you want to switch directions, then you could switch directions and just play full
out the other direction but whatever you choose you’ve got to go full that direction.
So many people make the mistake of not going full out and instead they end up being mediocre
in both things.
That’s not the place that you want to be, I can tell that.
If you want to run your own business that’s going to be a total different thing.
You have to understand, if you go this route—I thought when I was first bringing Simple Programmer
up and really getting this business going and going full time into this that I’d still
be coding 20% of the time or whatever and I code 0% of the time now pretty much but
I had to make that choice.
I had to realize that I have to give this up if I want to take this to where it goes
and I’m happy with that choice.
But I would be really unhappy right now if I were still feeling guilty about not coding
or feel like I had to be coding right now.
I’m sure that you’re in the same type of situation.
You’re going to feel a lot better when you finally make a decision but make a decision
and don’t look back.
Just go for it and know that that’s the right thing.
You can always make different decisions later.
That’s the other thing.
It’s not like you’ll never be able to make another choice in your life.
If you someday want to go back and become a coder, then do that and do that 100% if
you go the management route but don’t do what you’re doing right now.
It’s just going to stress you out.
It’s double the work.
It’s not going to benefit you at all.
Anyway, great question, huge dilemma to be in but it’s an easily solvable problem if
you’ll just commit to one direction.
This doesn’t just apply to this decision.
So many places, so many decisions, in our career in life we want both.
We don’t want to just commit to one thing.
You know those kind of people who are straddling the fence and you don’t trust them and you
know that they’re wasting their life because they could be really great, but they’re
choosing to be good in multiple things and sacrificing being great in one thing.
Great is so much better than good.
Anyway, hopefully this helps you.
If you have a question for me, email me at john@simpleprogrammer.com.
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Take care.