11 reasons to be a manager

The reason for writing this post was the wonderful thoughts of the author TheR about the pitfalls of re-profiling from a programmer / engineer / just a techie to a manager. The author of the post promised to write his own list of reasons, why it is sometimes worth it to do it, but almost half a year has passed, and the list never appeared, so I’ll tell you about my vision of the problem.

My career started at the very beginning of zero, for 6 years I worked as a programmer and consultant at various levels, and about 5 years ago I was completely reassigned to a manager. The decision to leave the purely technical field, like many, I took under the impression of the illusion that managers have much more money, more opportunities to make decisions, etc. As TheR wrote in the post mentioned above, many of my assumptions about working as a manager turned out to be an illusion, but a certain amount of obvious (and not so) buns are still present in this profession. I hope that these two posts about the pros and cons of such conversion will help someone from Habrovchan to make an informed decision about the further development of his career.


My personal list of the benefits of working as a manager looks like this. The items are rather chaotically, for each reader the importance of this or that item will be higher or lower, maybe I missed something, so I will be glad if someone from the former techies, and now the managers of Habr will help me to add it.
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1. The ability to influence the product
   When I worked as an ordinary programmer I was terribly depressed by the inability to make decisions on a product. Some features seemed ridiculous and completely unnecessary to me, others were extremely lacking, but it was not me who made the decision, of course. I had to dig from the fence to lunch. When I became a Project Manager, the situation did not change much for me - there is always a Product Manager, a marketing department, “product shareholders”, etc. However, already from the Product Manager level (the next step after the project), you have a real opportunity to shape the product as you see it. Of course, there are still people above you in the hierarchy who intervene in the process, but most of the decisions about features and their packaging are made at the level of products and programs of managers. Unlike a lone programmer who implements only a small part of the functional, products can really say that “this is their brainchild”. Each feature has been won over thousands of meetings, dragged through hundreds of bugs and finally implemented in production according to your plan and under your strict guidance.
   In small companies, such decisions are made at the level of PM, in the large enterprises, in which I mainly worked, product formation is the level of the Product Manager - Program Manager.
   
   
2. Horizontal career development
   As a rule, the programmer does not often change the field of activity. If you are working on the web, there are 90 chances out of 100 that in the next job / position you will also make websites. If you write under C microcontrollers, it is extremely unlikely that you will be called upon to make mobile apps. It is difficult to change not only the stack of technologies with which you work, but also the industry. The developer of accounting software is not needed by people making a geo-targeting startup. At some point, the monotony begins to bother, as if you are in a glass cage. Virtually the way out is simple - learn a couple of new technologies and change jobs, but in practice the lack of experience in these technologies will not allow you to rely on a position better than Junior Developer.
   Managers and simpler and more difficult at the same time. Product Manager can quite easily change into a marketer or sales manager, although, of course, he will not be able to become a financier, of course. In any case, the set of areas in the direction of which you can move is much wider. Not to mention the fact that no industry and almost no product are closed for PM, even if it doesn’t have enough experience.
   
   
3. Money, money, money ...
   Yes, the money is really more. Not as much as it seemed when I was a programmer, but still the difference is palpable and go in the opposite direction (manager -> techie) is extremely difficult, even though there is a desire to do something with your hands. Especially noticeable difference in money for those who go into consulting or sales. Virtually, the salary of a consultant or salesperson is not limited to anything - know yourself to sell projects / products, and get a percentage. In practice, wages are, of course, limited, but in any case, the average non-lazy sales get 30% -50% more PM and two to three times more than the average developer. Ce la vie.
   
   
4. Personal growth and development of communication skills
   Work as a manager really develops personality. 10 years ago, I was a classic Introvert Nerdom, shy of unfamiliar companies and having a 3-person circle. Turning to managers, I began to meet 10-15 new people a week, I had to regularly speak in front of a completely unfamiliar audience, at many meetings I became the “face of the company” to customers, I simply did not have the opportunity to be closed. One way or another, Soft skills are developing - i.e. communication skills, behavior skills in an unfamiliar environment, conflict resolution and difficult negotiation skills. The biggest test for me was my first dismissal of a subordinate, who was like a man to me, but didn’t suit me as an employee. Such an experience is invaluable in real life, you learn to interact with people, to look for win-win solutions that allow everyone to be satisfied.
   
   
5. New acquaintances
   During these 5 years I have met more interesting and outstanding people than, perhaps, in my whole previous life. Interaction with customers, partners, top management, outstanding developers allows you to constantly meet new interesting people. The circle of working communication of the programmer is usually limited to his division. Occasionally - two or three managers. Well, maybe someone else who you meet at corporate party (girls from the accounting department, as without them). As I said above, as a manager you constantly meet new people. The circle of dating just explodes. If at the same time you are working for a fairly large and branded company, you have the opportunity to meet really significant people who have achieved a lot in life and can share interesting stories or give good advice from their experience.
   
   
6. Decrease in the degree of professional deformation
   As you know, IT people are accustomed to reduce any problem to IT. About this property of IT specialists there was even a recent post . The degree of professional deformation of IT people can sometimes reach grotesque and ridiculous forms. I knew one person who spent 2 weeks developing his own system of collecting and accounting money for gifts for employees in a company of 10 people (hint: a piece of paper and a pen would solve this problem in 2 minutes).
   Work as a manager (especially at least a little removed from pure IT) brings us into reality at least a bit and brings us closer to ordinary, non-IT people. The constant need to plan resources and the desire to achieve the goal is not the most versatile / technologically advanced method, but the fastest and least costly, makes you evaluate tasks in a completely different way. This allows you to be more humane or something.
   
   
7. Work for generalists
   The manager, as a rule, cannot afford to be a narrow specialist. There are both negative and positive sides to this. Yes, relatively speaking, you do not know the features of the implementation of sharding on Postgres, but you worked on 10 different projects using three dozen different competing technologies. You can always make a reasoned, based on your own experience solution for a particular problem. The ideal manager becomes the so-called "T-shaped person", i.e. a person who has sufficiently deep expertise in one or two areas (albeit less than that of a narrow specialist) and average knowledge in all related areas. In many ways, it is more difficult than being a narrow specialist, because one has to constantly keep abreast of a very large number of topics, from the purely technological to the absolutely humanitarian, but this is an indispensable condition in order to be a good manager. To solve problems in which the manager is not strong, he hires narrow specialists (the programmer would have to deal himself).
   
   
8. Bosses look at me
   It is sad for techies, but for top management, their work remains completely unnoticeable. The higher the boss, the less he imagines what the techies are doing and the more guilt for the fakapu he places on them. The manager is much more noticeable to the big bosses, the success of the project is his success. But the project fakap in large corporations, as a rule, it is a performer fakap (I do not think so, but in practice the bosses usually think so). In this regard, the manager has higher chances of getting top buns (although, in fact, managers also actually get more pensions than techies).
   If you are lucky with the company, objective criteria for evaluating the usefulness of a particular employee will work there. But I would not hope for it - during my career I met only one such company, so most likely, as a techie, you will receive less buns / bonuses / promotions than managers.
   
   
9. Learn and learn
   Again, this is not to say that this is a 100% rule, but in my experience, corporations are more willing to train their managers than their techies. In most companies where I worked, the maximum that a techie has been offered is to pass any exams on their own and then the company will pay for them. Well, maybe even send to the conference. For managers, trainings were constantly arranged, expensive coaches were hired, salary increase programs for professional certification were introduced, etc. In addition, many Western companies encourage so-called. knowledge share - i.e. a situation when you yourself are a coach / coach for your colleagues. In any case, the investment in the staff, according to my feelings, is much higher for managers than for techies.
   
   
10. Business trips. Thousands of them
    In the first year of the change of activity profile, I was on 8 business trips from 2 days to a month. Of these, 4 were in Western Europe and the USA. Over the past 5 years, I have traveled all over Russia far and wide, most of the CIS and many European countries. In one of the years I had 46 flights for the year. Yes, this is largely due to the specifics of the field in which I work, but in any case, travel for managers is a much more frequent and familiar thing than for programmers. Not for all this will be a plus, but I take it as a free (for me) opportunity to see the world. Again, the chances of going to a conference away from the main office are much greater with the manager than with the programmer, especially as regards foreign conferences.
    
    
11. Planning to create your own business? Now twice as fast!
    Yes this is true. Working as a manager provides not only the necessary skills to create a successful business, but also the necessary contacts. Business cannot exist in a vacuum; it needs personnel, partners, and clients. As a programmer, you can solve the problem yourself at best, only frames (and then only techies, but not all others), as for finding customers, attracting partners, marketing a product, etc. then most likely you will not be able to do this effectively due to the lack of necessary skills and connections. Several years of experience with PM, especially when combined with sales and marketing, will greatly simplify your life - there will be your contacts, there will be experience, there will be a better understanding of how to make a product from a craftsman, etc. And, of course, it will be much easier for you to communicate with investors - you will speak the same language with them and will cause them much more confidence.
    

Instead of conclusion
In any profession there are pros and cons, not to say that being a techie is definitely better or worse than a manager. Unlike TheR, I never regret the decision to change my profession, but what I regret for sure is that there is no real information about what it means to be a programmer and what it means to be a manager. It would be great if somewhere there was a comparison, like on Yandex.Market with the parameters of a particular profession, but as long as it is not there - all I can do is present you my vision of positive aspects, and only you can judge. Good luck in your career and great professional achievements to you, Habrovchane!