Like everything in life – from both a professional and personal perspective – the real reasons behind your motivations, and the ultimate decision you make to really change and move forward, is fundamental to succeeding. As TED speaker and author, Simon Sinek, puts it best:
Finding your own "why" can be a wondrous journey, but that journey is not a defined process. Unlike software development, this journey is different for everyone. My own journey took five years, three jobs, and four managers. And my journey is still continually evolving even to this day. Every day, I'm still learning to balance a hands-on techie approach, and a hands-off manager approach – and the various combinations in between. In fact, the one thing that I've learned is that different requirements and situations require a different mix.
So, you must be honest with yourself. Do you want a bigger salary? Higher prestige? More learning and development? Or simply the challenge of trying something new? Are you even a little bored with being just a developer? Your why sits in the middle of your Golden Circle, as set out by Simon Sinek.
The Golden Circle model can be seen in Figure 1.1. It sets out the layers and relationships between your innermost values and your outermost physical behaviors, and it's like an onion. Knowing why you are doing something is the most powerful driving force behind any movement:
Now, feeling bored or unchallenged, and yearning for a new test, would be more of an inner driver, while having more money, a grander title, or greater power would be more of an outer driver. It's vital here to understand what the cause is, and what the effect is, because there's nothing wrong with wanting the results of your labor but you need to be looking in the right places for the rewards you want.
If your singular aim is to earn more money, then there are alternative methods for achieving this – you could work in sales, because, simplistically speaking, more sales will lead to more money.
If you genuinely want to be a great manager, then your journey from Developer-to-Manager needs to be a sustainable and meaningful endeavor – because you will need to really know what is your why. If you don't, then you you'll run the risk of failing, regressing, and being typecast as a techie who can't do anything else. In short, you must know your inner cause!