If you are on your way to becoming a manager, or you're thinking of starting your journey to become a manager, then this book will give you all the insights, tools, and techniques that you will need for your journey.
This book is your ultimate guide to the journey of becoming a manager and a leader of a technical team. I share my own unique experiences so that you can learn from my own journey. You can take my successes and make them your own, and you can hear learn how to avoid the mistakes I made along the way.
Developers have a wide range of skills, and usually this includes a great capacity for logic. I'll show you how to utilize this key strength, and together we'll plan the Developer-to-Manager journey as logically and methodologically as possible.
We're going to launch our journey in this first chapter, by exploring together the fundamental and positive reasons that are driving you forward to become a manager. By taking a balanced view of the pros and cons of becoming a manager, as well as the outcomes and impacts, we'll be able to pinpoint exactly where you are, and how you got here so far, in terms of your career. This will give you a clear sense of what your current course and trajectory are, as well as your natural tendencies, your likes, and dislikes. These are the most important factors for you to think about.
Over the course of this journey, we'll also define what your end destination will be, based on key ideas about what a "manager" really is. By analyzing the more human side of being a manager together and exploring key questions – such as whether being a manager means that you need to be responsible for a team of real people – we will also demystify some of the common preconceptions you may have about becoming a manager.
So, let's get started! We asked the question, why you want to become a manager? And what if you're part of the "Accidental Manager" phenomenon where you didn't get to choose? How could you use this to your advantage? We'll be answering these questions by the end of this chapter.