How to keep coding as a technical manager, to cause maximum pain
I code, you code, we all code, but I can fire you
It is essential to keep your skills sharp once you become a manager. Not your manager skills, silly, your day-to-day coding skills. You miss coding, and now you are in charge, so nothing stops you from dipping into the code and contributing whenever and wherever you want. You find it easy to pick things off the board and work on them: nobody ever challenges you during code review, or reminds you to add unit tests, or pushes back during testing. Your changes seem to end up going into production with ease.
You see, when you are in meetings with more experienced managers, you hate it. They are always talking about boring things, like process and coordination. But when you are in meetings with developers, you love it. So consider the development group your Primary Team and rejoin it part-time. They have a lot of work to get done, after all, and this is a straightforward way that you can help.
But after doing this for a while, you start to see some odd behavior in the team - they aren't following up on things as expected. Your change caused a problem, and nobody mentioned it during the retrospective, and the test plans never got updated to cover the missed case. It is like it didn't happen at all. Seeing the cover-up, you start punishing people for their oversights. How can these people be so stupid and careless?
When the system needs support, you start also to notice that they don't jump on it like they used to. Since you recently contributed, you are able to jump in and fix the problem during a production incident but are disappointed in the team. Where is the sense of ownership?
Oh well, you need to set a good example for them, so you take on more work and start contributing more, blowing off some manager meetings.
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