Are You Ready For Management?
How do you know if you’re ready for management?
There are some similarities to readiness for a senior IC role and some differences.
An IC, which stands for Individual Contributor, indicates a role with no people management responsibilities.
A common career path as an IC starts with a “junior” or “associate” title, advances to “mid” or “professional” and continues with “senior”. In the past, the only way to continue to progress was to become a manager, even without any skills or desire, and nowadays the dual track gained popularity. It allows further career progression either as an IC with titles such as “staff” and “principal” or as a people manager.
A common management progression in Engineering looks like this:
Engineering Manager > Director > VP > CTO with variants of “associate” or “senior”. The Manager’s Path captures the roles and responsibilities in detail.
The criteria for people management may vary as can be seen in many career ladders, and can be quite vague: “communication skills”, “business skills” and “leadership skills”.
Why do you want to be a manager?
Some reasons to be a manager are “wrong” in the sense that you will suffer from the role, tasks, responsibilities and day-to-day. This suffering might lead to burnout and lower performance for the whole team. In some cultures and organizations stepping down is possible, but in others, it’s considered a failure.
Such “wrong” reasons include social status and prestige, gaining power, having authority and telling others what to do, a higher salary, avoiding IC work or fulfilling your family’s expectations.
“Good” reasons will allow for perseverance in the face of the challenges: bringing more value, growing people, improving the performance of the whole team or having higher influence over the vision and strategy.
Getting ready for management
Examine your own behavior — taking responsibility, influencing others, getting buy-in, making good trade-offs and arguments, respectful communication, doing the right thing even if hard, volunteering, being on time, having meaningful metrics — does it match the behavior of respected managers you work with?
Ask to lead a small project, coordinate tasks, plan, influence people, do admin stuff — see how much you like it and what you learn from it.
Talk to other managers in the department or outside — ask about their day to day work, tasks, challenges, meetings, having 1:1s, giving feedback, coaching, delegating and taking care of people topics.
Summarize what you learned and why it’s for you.
Notify your manager about your intent. They’d better know and provide feedback. They may coach you and find suitable opportunities.
Moving from manager to director, i.e. managing managers, is another step that requires consideration. As a manager, you’re in the operations of your team, a single domain, and you advocate for your team. All in a relatively short feedback loop, sometimes doing the work together with the ICs.
As a Director, there is much more context, more domains, interactions between them, diverse stakeholders, higher connection to the business side, more strategic goals and optimizing for the whole.
Besides mentioning you want to progress, ask and talk about strategy in meetings, and get exposure — presentations to other stakeholders and upper management, do market analysis, share information and communicate to the entire company.
Is your direct report ready for management?
Observe their behavior: their level of taking responsibility, influencing others, making good arguments, respectful communication, doing the right thing even if hard or acting according to the values and strategy.
If your direct report mentions they want to transition to management, first understand their reasons. A “bad” motivation is likely to fail, and it means the person is not ready yet. A common reason they may give is the generic “to grow and influence”. In this case, keep digging deeper, because a technical IC role could be a better fit for growth. If there is a spark of genuine passion for management, it can be a great starting point for further learning about management. The point is not to discourage them, but to make sure they are aware of what it entails — the good, the bad and the ugly.
Ask them how they see the role, tasks, challenges and day-to-day work. Teach them about gaps.
Send them to talk to other managers and learn about the day-to-day work, tasks, challenges, meetings, taking care of people topics and what they love about the role. Ask them to summarize what they learned and why they think it’s for them.
Explain what they would lose — might be coding, maintaining, pairing, and generally quite a different calendar.
Start a short training to see if it’s for them. For example 1:1s and giving feedback.
Run a small pilot: let them run a small project, coordinate tasks, make plans, deliver reports, influence people, engage in project management, do admin stuff and stakeholder management — see how much they perform, how much they like it and what they learn from it.
While the leap from IC to first-time management is considered the hardest, moving from leading a team to leading a group also requires preparation and readiness.
The Engineering Manager is about the operations of their team, involves a single domain and fighting for their team. The feedback loop is relatively short and they spend time with the people doing the work.
As a Director, there is much more context, more domains and their interactions, more diverse stakeholders, higher connection to the business side, more strategic goals, optimizing for a whole department. The feedback loop is not so short and there are intermediaries to the people doing the work, setting their own sub-culture.
As their manager, you can ask them from time to time about the strategy, how we are contributing to it, what they think about it and what conflicts they see between their own team and the department as a whole.
Ready for management?
Assuming your reasons are valid, there is no checklist for people management even when a career ladder exists. It’s an accumulation of several dimensions — and mostly, when you bring more value, not when you think you deserve it.
You usually don’t know. There are clues, some clearer and more evident than others, and you may have to take a leap and see.
You may be ready when:
- Actually being told by your manager you are ready (ideally with committing to support)
- Receiving continuous positive feedback, official performance review and additional responsibilities from the manager, ideally with constructive feedback
- If a career ladder is available, compare the expected results and behavior of a manager on all dimensions — functional, “soft skills”, leadership, communication and values. Then follow the “150% rule” as much as possible: you do 100% of your current role and 50% of the next role
- Continuously achieved proven results (on time, on budget, quality)
- Actively sought feedback and were given
- Analyzed how other managers behave and can describe what good looks like
- Contributed to meetings, not only as a silent participant: retrospective, priorities, decisions, design, support cases, preparing for upcoming events, etc.
- Facilitated or led meetings, set agendas
- Kept actively learning, applying and growing out of your comfort zone (podcasts, articles, books, courses, conferences, meetups)
- Thought not only about right now, but also about the near future
- Admitted mistakes and looked for the best way to proceed
- Effectively communicated, people understood your intent and you successfully influenced for the benefit of the company, e.g. how to solve a problem, work practices, architecture, priorities, etc.
- Saw conflicts as an evolution of ideas, meritocracy, not “who is right”
- Supported others on the team — pairing, designing, testing, operations, on-call
- Supported other teams
- Gained substantial domain knowledge
- Business understanding (how the business makes money) and customers’ pain
- Solved business problems, rather than looking for self gains, adopting tech for tech’s sake, and any other form of CV-driven decision-making
- Not only did you have an impact on getting tasks done and finding solutions to problems, you also found problems to work on (quality, observability, tech debt, productivity, UX, costs, maintainability)
- Successfully mentored more junior ICs and they became effective and independent over time
You are probably not ready when
- Significant negative feedback or performance review, responsibilities taken away
- Actually being told you are not ready yet, ideally with constructive feedback
- Time just passed doing the same
- You want status/salary/compare to colleagues without increasing your value
- Looked for shiny new tech for CV or tech’s sake
- Focused on self-benefit over the team’s success
- Made things more complicated
- Blamed others and had justifications for faults
- Didn’t volunteer, only the bare minimum
- Missed deadlines, had quality issues, others helped clean up after you
- Waited for others to take the lead, shying away from responsibility
- Complained instead of finding solutions
Yes, the criteria for management is not that far from senior IC roles. The main difference is a passion for managing and dealing with people problems and needs over technical expertise.
The most effective approach is to proactively communicate your intent to your manager, get their feedback about gaps, strengths and weaknesses, and develop an individual growth plan to get there.
