My Hardest Lesson

I’m developer first. I write code. This is what I love.

This blog post is however about something different. It’s about a thing I am doing in parallel. It does not take too much of my time, and yet is the thing I am the most proud of: people management. And about hardest lesson I learned:

People management is just communication

Being a good manager is about asking right questions. You ask customer (your boss, higher-up manager):

• What do you need?
• Why do you need that?
• What are your priorities?
• Is this new thing more important than what we are doing right now?

You get answers and tell them to your developers:

• Our customer needs this:…
• The rationale behind this is:…
• Current priorities are:…

Now it’s time to ask developers:

• What is your opinion on this? Do you have better idea?
• Are you willing to do that?
• How long will it take?
• Do you have enough free time?

Then you go back with those answers to customer. There is little more to managing people, mostly trust and teaching.

Full control is overrated.