Title:  Re: From tech to teams.
Date:  20200123
Tags:  me work
========================================

Finally caught up on a few days of missed gopher reading.  I happened to catch
sysdharma's[0] post about a career change and I actually can respond within a
reasonable time frame. :)

I'm in a similar spot in my career.  I've had numerous different technical roles
throughout my career.  I've always been in software.  I've done manual QA,
automated testing of CLIs, programming, tech support, GUI testing, release
engineering, build automation, system administration, and devops.  Working with
networking, electronics, web services, graphics, online games, research, and
finance.  And I've been in management, twice.

I used to change jobs every couple of years (for one reason or another) and
usually ended up in a different technical focus each time.  I enjoy learning new
things and get bored eventually.  I never wanted to be in management.  I like
the technical work, solving problems, learning the new technology, and being in
the trenches.  I'm also not great with people.  Computers I have a chance of
understanding.

About 10 years ago, at a previous company, I was their only release engineer and
created their entire system of deployment.  I loved building technical solutions
from the ground up like that.  As we grew beyond the ability to have one person
doing all the work, I ended up as a lead, then officially a manager.  At the
peak, I had 6 people working for me.  I hated it.  I had trouble letting go of
doing everything myself.  I managed (which meant hours of meetings) and yet
still did a person's worth of technical work because that's what I enjoyed.
There were aspects of the job that I thought was unfair to the team members so I
was always the first of the team in the office and the last to leave.  I could
help out when needed, or at least not leave them to suffer alone.  I did like
that I knew the process and where we should be headed and that, as manager, I
was heard by the company and could make those decision but this was not a
sustainable situation.  Over time I did let go a bit.  I trusted my team to get
the job done well and shortly before leaving as the company crumbled, I was
working shorter days.

After leaving, I went back to a technical role.  Hopped through a couple places
and ended up where I still am.  This has been my longest place of employment as
I have changed roles while working here.  I started out as a build engineer and
sort of pulled in additional responsibilities that were around that.  I
administered the software, the servers, and supported the users.  When my
manager left there was the question of who would fill that spot.  I was the most
likely choice partly because I was the only direct employee on the team, the
other 2 on the team were contractors, and partly because I was most personable
and communicative with the people around me.  Ironic, given my past...

I knew the team, I knew most of the work (even if I hadn't done most of it), and
I wanted to take care of them and not roll the dice on the company finding a
good replacement externally (I've been down that road before).  I accepted, with
the explicit statements that I am not a manager, I am a technical person, I'm
going to be figuring out how to deal with people on the fly, and if I don't like
it I'm going back where I was.

It's been about a year a half.  The team is now up to 4 people and one more
starting in a couple of weeks.  For the first year, we were so swamped, I was
back in the mode of working two jobs, between being a manager and doing the
technical work.  Now that I have more people, I am able to (forced to) focus
on management.  Unfortunately, we haven't yet been able to find a new build
engineer so I'm still doing that work.  Just not as a well.  I can't say I'm
loving management, it is still work and I'd rather be doing fun hobbies at this
point, but it's a change which has kept me from getting bored, the team is
happy, and my bosses are happy.  I hope the group we support is happy, we've had
tough times because of a lack of resources.  I want to make them happy, too.

It was a rough transition.  We were way under staffed so I was working two jobs.
The group we support needed the technical work, management above me wanted
management work.  The managers above me were going through their own transitions
at the same time so there was poor communication and cooperation.  Now that
things have settled, I am very well supported by my managers.  That has made a
huge difference.  That and being able to hire more people.  I think it's those
above you that matter most in job satisfaction as a manager.  Not much you can
change if your boss is adversarial, doesn't listen to you or trust you, or
undermines you.  It's a challenge to have to work both sides.  Taking care of
those that work for you and those you work for.  For example, between taking
care of my team and the technical needs of the users for that first year, or
doing the management tasks for my bosses, 100% I'm taking care of the team and
the users.  That's the team's job.  That's my job.  My bosses agreed with me,
despite constant pushing for me to focus more on management.  If they hadn't, I
would not be happy and there would be a fight.

I'm satisfied where I am this time, as opposed to 10 years ago, because more and
more, recently, I've gotten frustrated with technology.  I love learning about
the cool new tools and paradigms, but then when I have to use them, I tend to
find them annoying, confusing, broken, and terrible.  I don't love software
technology like I used to.  This role allows me to keep up with what's going on
in the technical space but then let other people who enjoy working with it
become engrossed in it and the experts with it.  I'll keep my opinions about how
I think it's over hyped, over complicated, hot garbage to myself if you want to
go show me that it can be useful.  I won't argue with results.  Within reason,
of course.  I'm still the boss.


[0] gopher://sdf.org:70/1/users/sysdharma/phlog/./2020.01.23