Comment by elevatortrim
19 days ago
Asking as a fellow manager - do you ever wonder some of the people you manage might be thinking of you in the same way? Someone making terrible decisions, making them less efficient? And, have you ever noticed that something you strongly pushed back when you were an IC did not matter, or was actually the right thing in retrospect?
> do you ever wonder some of the people you manage might be thinking of you in the same way?
I'm almost certain some of those I manage do think of me in this way. I try to explain my thought process and decision making to those I manage, and I am always looking for genuine critical feedback. I also own up to it when I've made a bad call. Overall, my anonymous ratings are pretty high, and my teams have seen exceedingly low turnover so I take those as good signs.
I used to be so deeply annoyed with leadership decisions as an IC. When I got into management my attitude completely shifted. Leadership only cares about shipping code. Thinking they care about anything else and you're fooling yourself. So whatever your team cares about your decisions doesn't matter. Are they shipping code? All good. Team dynamics will work itself out as long as you're pushing to main.
Now I'm back to being an IC and I just do the job. Want me to change this variable name so its more readable, in your opinion? No problem. I shall change const foo to const bar.