Michael Lopp writes about his evolution from a developer into a manager of developers. Lots of good stuff here. For example, on meetings:
As best I can tell, there are two useful types of meeting: alignment and creation. Briefly:
Alignment meetings sound like this: “It’s red, are we all in agreement it’s red? Ok, swell. Wait, Phil thinks it’s blue. Phil, here are the 18 compelling reasons it’s red. Convinced? Done now?”
Creation meetings sound like this: “We need more blue. How are we going to do that? Phil, you’re our blue man. What should we do here?”
On understanding the perspectives of different roles within a company:
- Sales cares about selling and doesn’t much care how hard it is to build.
- Marketing is passionate about brand, content, and voice and will argue endlessly for details you find to be irrelevant.
- Tech supports talks to the customer ALL DAY, but still feels no one listens to what they say.
- Admins speak many of these languages and have more power than you think.
On saying no:
As a manager, you are caretaker of No for you group. When it is time to do the right thing by stopping, it’s your job to bust out the No. You defend your team against organizational insanity with No.