Good managers are gems.
Especially technical managers.
One of the things that happens as careers continue is competent people are offered the opportunity to manage. First at the project and team level and then as a more formal position with formal direct reports and hierarchy.
A really good technical sysadmin or programmer may or may not become a good manager.
The first thing they need to realize is they are not already competent at management despite being a technical God and a nice person. Whatever that means.
Management is a very specific skill. Technical people thrown in to this fail, without really grasping that this is NOT a technical problem, and that your technical skills don’t help you in this.
The first hurdle is really getting this is not the same skill, and realizing you have a bit to learn to do it well.
The second is to let your technical expertise be secondary to your team’s expertise. Let your people do what they are good at and were hired to do. Trust your people. Let go, and do not micromanage and try and steer the solutions exactly as they would have been if you did it yourself. You are not doing it yourself anymore, this is your team instead. Let them do good work as much on their own as you can.
Push barriers aside. Remove meetings, push away other manager’s distractions. Protect and nurture your people.
Be mindful of maker time vs manager time. Let your people decide if they attend any meetings scheduled after say 10 AM. And really give them the ability to say no.
Remove distractions, point the team and stand aside out of the way. And thank god for the “Individual Contributor” job path because hell for me would be management, unless I own the company.
Just sayin.
— doug