TITLE: Becoming a Manager
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: September 22, 2014  4:09 PM
DESC: 
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BODY:
If you are an engineer or faculty member thinking about moving
into administration, you should read
<A HREF="http://randsinrepose.com/archives/a-disclosure/">
   A Disclosure</A>
an essay by Rands.  It is the best short treatment of "becoming
a manager" I've read and is worth more than a stack of
similarly-themed books from the business shelf in the bookstore.

I have never been an engineer <EM>per se</EM>.  I was a faculty
member: a programmer, teacher, and scientist.  I built things
in order to learn cool stuff, and then figured out how to teach
my students about that same stuff.  I came to management nine
years ago when we needed a new department, via a blend of two
of the paths Rands describes:  I decided that I could be a
better department head than our acting head, who was helping as
a stand-in from another department, and there were no other
reasonable choices at the time.

Whether I have been a good enough department head is open for
discussion.  This is a difficult job, or at least different
enough from I used to do that it seems difficult.  Re-reading
this blog today reminds me that I should re-visit my decision
occasionally.  There may well be other reasonable choices now,
and my decision may have changed.

How do you know that the job is different, that you are living
in a different world now?  Easy:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
 This sensation will appear at the end of the day when you
 ask, "What did I build today?"  The answer will be a
 troubling, "Nothing".  The days of fixing ten bugs before
 noon are gone.  You're no longer going to spend the bus
 ride home working on code; you're going to be thinking
 hard about how to say something important to someone who
 doesn't want to hear it.  There will be drama.  And there
 be those precious seconds when there is no one in your
 office wanting...  something.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

Before I became head, I never knew how many hours I would
spend thinking hard about how to say something important to
someone in a way that communicates effectively without
misleading the person, confusing the person, or hurting
the person's feelings.  And, yes, sometimes people don't
want to hear what I have to say.

The paragraph I quote is typical but not unique.  Each week,
I live some part of nearly every paragraph in this blog.
The constant challenge for the engineer- or faculty
member-turned-manager is, "Is this what makes you happiest
and most effective?"
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