Good Project Managers, Business Analysts, or Development Managers are much rarer than good Developers IME, and overall much more important IMO.
I'm a Developer. My wife is an Senior Operations Manager (head of the Business Analysts as well as some other roles). If I had to pick between having me on a team, or her, I'd pick her in a heartbeat. And there's not developer I know or have worked with that would make me rethink that choice.
Because she can make a lot of "OK" individuals and build a "Great", effective team.
IME you can easily have a number of "Great" individuals and end up with a "Failing" team without the management piece.
Also, this is maybe just me, but it really gets under my skin when I hear "great managers are there to run interference and give developers the room to do great things". That's absolutely false. I've been a Manager. I've tried to do that. It only ends up in failure. You do that and all you'll get are half baked projects that blow the budget nine times out of ten.
Great Managers delegate. They don't try to code. They get metrics. On everything. Just like the unquestioned advice about getting metrics for every aspect of your application, it's even more important to have metrics for your development. How long does it take to add a Form to the application? Is the Database involved in this Change Request? What does the Deployment Procedure look like? These things are in fact quantifiable, estimatable and predictable given experience and data if you know how to break them up.
Give people room to spike something, but when it isn't working out use the data to see that and kill it so you don't end up in a swamp. Don't try to be a Developer and a Manager at the same time. Until you've done every bit of your job you could possibly do in Management you don't get to go on recess playing Developer.
My wife's RFPs deliver within 93% of the hours estimate. It takes money to get there, but you put the effort in ahead of time, while it's just paper, when Change Requests are cheap. You try to avoid iteration of code during development because it's 10X the price at that point. You're able to plan budgets, quarters, quantify contributions, get people compensated fairly, make sure no one is ever working nights or weekends.
The worst slogs/most expensive projects I've ever worked on have had the least planning and most iteration during development. The best projects, where you felt you actually accomplished something every day, where you could see the light at the end of the tunnel because the whole thing was estimated and so far you're able to fairly accurately predict the accuracy of the estimates, have been far and away the most successful both in cost and client satisfaction.
That's my experience anyways.
All that just to say: If you're interested in the Software Development field and want the best chance at having an impact, changing people's lives for the better: Be a great Manager. And that's not necessarily the one the "cool" developers think you should be.
As a business systems analyst (Product Owner in agile terms) for a fotune 500 company, thank you for this comment. You uplifted my spirits.
Also, I agree with most of it, but I would argue that the best teams I've been on have at least one extremely competent developer, even if not necessarily a great one.
Why? Because I can articulate the product vision and goals working closely with that developer, and together we can make sure the other developers are developing as required.
In an ideal world developers would have all the domain and functional knowledge required to not need people like myself. But the truth of the matter is, that the higher up you go, the more specialized you become, the more you need to do only one or the other.
There are only so many hours in the day - you can either hone your skills as a developer or develop the expertise of keeping multiple business stakeholders happy while holding your own against developers and delivering in a consistent fashion.
I still think your job is more important though and I'd rather work on a team with great management than great developers any day given an either or choice.
IME great developers and great managers are attracted to each other. The few times I've been on great teams (I'm a developer) when the top one or two devs left, the team fell apart. Same thing happened on other teams when the great PM left. The talented people with career mobility know when they're put in a bad spot and have the ability to get out.
I will soon be working as a PM at one of the big tech companies as my first job.
I've gotten the gist of these lessons from a software engineering class, HN articles, and from my internship (at the same company), but I'm still not very confident about becoming a great PM. Can you recommend any books or resources that covers more of this kind of stuff?
When your boss asks a question: Be able to answer it. If you can't, figure out how to answer it. Figure out what you need to track to be able to answer it in the future without being asked.
This is where Agility comes in. Not in throwing out Planning. But in being able to respond to Bad Planning by incrementally improving your process and understanding until you've got Good Planning.
You're not going to walk in the door on day one and toss out a plan that lines up actual to estimated hours at 93%. But with that tenacious follow up and follow through you can get there.
And it's not just for the boss. It's awesome as a Developer to know that I'm 50% done. That the requirements have been met for the 50% I've delivered so far and I won't be constantly going back and reworking code because someone didn't put in any effort ahead of time to think this damn thing through.
Rework is the death of budgets, team happiness, and will bring about the zombie apocalypse.
Also, meetings are an important, efficient way to dig through tough problems or keep stakeholders up to date and involved. If you feel like your meeting are wasting time, then maybe you're just not managing your meetings well enough. Or maybe it's because it's not all about you. Maybe it's a little bit about Bob the Developer transitioning off another project that just wrapped up and onto this one, or Trisha the Account Executive who has her weekly status update with the client tomorrow. Or discussing the great success or disappointing failure of spiking this new library.
I think of Development Team meetings like Pool Maintenance. Sure it'd be nice not to pay the Pool Guy to come out and check the water. If you could only pay him for "real work" that'd be great. But that's not reality. And if you're not daily spending 15 to 30 minutes testing the water with a: "What did you plan to do yesterday? What did you actually end up doing? What do you plan to do today?" then you're likely blowing a lot more than the 15-30 minutes * N Developers with people floundering, getting tunnel vision, people who need a helping hand, maybe just need a break, making sure Bob is aware of the utility classes Tammy just developed so he doesn't go off duplicating effort, etc.
It's about fostering communication. It doesn't happen by accident. If you find it's happening and effective without the meeting then by all means re-evaluate. But don't do that before you actually have the data to prove that. Because the risk is much greater than the cost.
And managing risk is what it's all about. You do that right, and your odds of success go up ten fold. That doesn't mean don't try anything new either. It means weigh your options. Timebox. Reinvest in your product and your team, but don't get so distracted you forget why you're here.
Former PM here. The Product & Project management jobs vary tremendously by company, and even within a company. Your best bet is to reach out to people who've had similar jobs in the same company and ask them for advice.
That said, I highly recommend The Innovator's Dilemma[0] and Inspired: How to Create Products Customers Love[1]
Scott Berkun [0] writes amazingly on this topic. Read his articles, read his books. I read "The Art of Project Management" [1] in 2005 and still go back to it.
I'm pretty similar to the poster, and after majoring in poly sic, spending a few years in sales, have moved in project management with a side of product management. Trying to move more in product, which can sometimes get more technical, or more creative/design depending on the company/product. Great advice.
I am 28 years old, have no college degree... actually i didnt finish high school either ;)
Have been dabbling in design, development, seo, marketing and petty much anything web/business related since i was 20 years old.
I also felt that i was in between an average computer user and super technical genius and wondered how I could use my skills to move forward while there were so many highly technical people out there.
One day i decided to start aiming for higher responsibility positions that would force me to grow and adapt, i only did this because i knew that i was the type of person that picks up skills fast and sees the job through.
I went through a few positions as a developer/designer, content writer, marketing manager, SEO manager and finally after 6 years i stumbled into project management for a development/design company and now i truly feel that i am using all my past experience and varied talents, so the past feels like it was an investment of my time.
Our company is small, at around 50 people, with 45% of those people being developers and I am now learning skills related to PM and people skills like motivation, dealing with bad seeds and building relationships. I am able to use my technical skills to translate client requirements to our developers and designers and also able to consult with clients to provide solutions based on my past experience.
You'll need to simply put value in what you know right now and think to yourself, i've made it this far and am willing to go further, so..... where do i want to go? You may choose going more technical, getting a degree and becoming a full time developer, if thats what you see yourself doing then go for it, anybody can learn to code. But it seems that you have not went that far for a reason and so you should think hard about it before investing your time into something you dont want to do for a long time.
Good luck whatever you choose.
BTW, i make $80k+ a year and thats actually pretty low for my position.
Good Project Managers, Business Analysts, or Development Managers are much rarer than good Developers IME, and overall much more important IMO.
I'm a Developer. My wife is an Senior Operations Manager (head of the Business Analysts as well as some other roles). If I had to pick between having me on a team, or her, I'd pick her in a heartbeat. And there's not developer I know or have worked with that would make me rethink that choice.
Because she can make a lot of "OK" individuals and build a "Great", effective team.
IME you can easily have a number of "Great" individuals and end up with a "Failing" team without the management piece.
Also, this is maybe just me, but it really gets under my skin when I hear "great managers are there to run interference and give developers the room to do great things". That's absolutely false. I've been a Manager. I've tried to do that. It only ends up in failure. You do that and all you'll get are half baked projects that blow the budget nine times out of ten.
Great Managers delegate. They don't try to code. They get metrics. On everything. Just like the unquestioned advice about getting metrics for every aspect of your application, it's even more important to have metrics for your development. How long does it take to add a Form to the application? Is the Database involved in this Change Request? What does the Deployment Procedure look like? These things are in fact quantifiable, estimatable and predictable given experience and data if you know how to break them up.
Give people room to spike something, but when it isn't working out use the data to see that and kill it so you don't end up in a swamp. Don't try to be a Developer and a Manager at the same time. Until you've done every bit of your job you could possibly do in Management you don't get to go on recess playing Developer.
My wife's RFPs deliver within 93% of the hours estimate. It takes money to get there, but you put the effort in ahead of time, while it's just paper, when Change Requests are cheap. You try to avoid iteration of code during development because it's 10X the price at that point. You're able to plan budgets, quarters, quantify contributions, get people compensated fairly, make sure no one is ever working nights or weekends.
The worst slogs/most expensive projects I've ever worked on have had the least planning and most iteration during development. The best projects, where you felt you actually accomplished something every day, where you could see the light at the end of the tunnel because the whole thing was estimated and so far you're able to fairly accurately predict the accuracy of the estimates, have been far and away the most successful both in cost and client satisfaction.
That's my experience anyways.
All that just to say: If you're interested in the Software Development field and want the best chance at having an impact, changing people's lives for the better: Be a great Manager. And that's not necessarily the one the "cool" developers think you should be.