The Manager's Path

Simple and frequent tasks – delegate. Minor code reviews or weekly progress summaries can be done by someone else.

Delegation is a process that starts slow but turns into an essential element for career growth. If your teams can’t operate well without you, you’ll find it hard to be promoted.

Complex and frequent tasks – delegate. Tasks like project planning and system designs can be used to develop your team.

Complex and infrequent – handle yourself. These tasks are yours alone – for example, making hiring plans or writing performance reviews. However, you can delegate them to rising leaders, to train them.

Simple and infrequent – handle yourself. It’s faster to do these tasks by yourself than to explain them to someone else.

Don’t turn a blind eye to simmering issues. Address the problems before it’s too late.

Don’t rely on consensus or voting. In teams, different people have different levels of expertise. It makes sense to rely on those whose level of expertise is higher.

You should continue writing code, but not too much.

It can be hard to balance the work of project management and oversight with hands-on technical delivery. Some days you’re on a maker’s schedule, and some days you’re on a manager’s schedule.

Training and career growth. Your manager is responsible for finding resources for your career growth. They may need to send you to attend conferences or take classes to upskill. Besides, he can contribute to your growth directly, helping you get promoted.

Feedback and workplace guidance. You will inevitably make mistakes. The sooner you get to know about them, the better. Criticism should be delivered in private, while praise – in public.

As you navigate your new obligations, start to ask yourself: How important is the thing I’m doing? Does it seem to be important because it’s urgent?

Even though you may stop writing code, your job will require that you guide technical decision making… you have the job of … making sure that the decisions pass the technical smell test and have been balanced against the overall context of the team and the business.