Ask Slashdot: Transitioning From Developer To Executive? 229
First time accepted submitter fivevibe writes "I'm about to switch from a position where I did hands on development to one where I will be building and managing technical team. I will be responsible for designing and implementing the company's overall tech strategy. I am excited about this move but also nervous. It will require a different focus than I had up to this point, different skills, and different orientation. What should I be learning, reading, thinking about in order to make this transition successfully and avoid growing pointy hair?"
learn? (Score:5, Funny)
just buy a bullwhip. Easiest way to interact with us mere mortal programmers. And get a cat.
Simple (Score:2, Funny)
1. Don't piss off programmers. Make them comfortable.
2. They are being paid, make sure they do the work they need to by the time it needs to be done. Stick to schedules. I can not stress how important it is to stick to schedules. If a programmer can't meet targets you feel were set fairly then you may have to fire him/her. If they claim it just takes them longer and you can deal with that then offer them lower pay - in the end results matter and you're on a budget.
3. Listen to advice from your developers carefully. If their ideas are dramatically different than yours in ways you think would be detrimental to the project then they may not understand something. If their ideas are good integrate them. If you don't understand their ideas but they sound good ask the other developers in the pool - a lot of developers get the idea they can do something really cool with some random technology and it just ends up being them the only one that understands it and it never ends up working right.
4. Designate a planner. This will probably be you. The planner takes the goal and the design and makes it into a step by step development cycle programmers can follow. Define critical passes and designate resources such that they come together well.
5. Watch your repositories! Each commit is a record of what a programmer thought. If they misunderstood something you should be able to see that they are going off course by looking at their code. Every day you don't catch this is another day wasted and probably another day it will cost you to bring the code back on course.
That's about all I can think of and all things I really wish I had known before handling teams of developers. Overall you just really need to remember to be focused on results and you really need to watch commits and source changes carefully so you can catch people going off course.
3 easy steps... (Score:5, Funny)
1 - give yourself a major head injury, you need to go from a educated professional to a brain damaged "visionary" who has "forward thinking" and "Paradigm Shift"
2 - buy a book on buzzwords and use them all wrong, typically in the wrong spots. "WE need to Empower the diversity of the SQL server! That way we can Achieve a Sea Change OF Spin up!"
3 - learn how to golf.
That is pretty much it.
Here are the 3 "R"s (Score:4, Funny)
Step 1: Report to surgery to have 50% of your brain removed (half the time they'll manage to get the part that governs common sense and ethics and you won't be handicapped in your new roll by that thing called a "conscience").
Step 2: Repeat "Knowing how to do the job isn't important - that's what we hire and fire people for" until you believe everyone under you is as replaceable as you are irreplacable.
Step 3: Register for every ridiculous vendor hand-out, symposium, or whatever. Vendors are your new friends. The more business you can hand them, the bigger YOUR empire becomes, and the more new-found allies you have.
The bonus:
Step 4: Remember all those jokes you made about incompetent management, because it'll make it easier for you to pry the keyboards from your former co-workers dead bodies when you realize that they're now saying the same thing about you.