How Promotions Ruin Dev Careers With Shopify's Dir. of Engineering, James Stanier
The skills required for management aren't necessarily the skills promoted developers have. Find out if it's the right path for you in this episode of Dev Interrupted
CORE
·
Join the DZone community and get the full member experience.
Join For FreeWe want to make the Dev Interrupted podcast a vital, enjoyable part of your week. Please take 2 minutes and answer our new Listener Survey. It lets us know a bit about you, what you want from Dev Interrupted and what you want from podcasts in general!
In so many professions, the reward for exceptional work is a promotion to management. Unfortunately, for developers whose programming gets them singled out for promotion, the skills to manage a team have nothing to do with the work that got them recognized in the first place.
James Stanier, Director of Engineering at Shopify, understands the pitfalls of being promoted from an IC to an engineering manager and began writing as a way to think through the mistakes he himself was making.
Today, James is an accomplished author; his first book Become An Effective Software Engineering Manager debuted in 2020, and his second book Effective Remote Work was published earlier this year.
On this week’s episode of Dev Interrupted, James talks about how developers can prepare themselves for a role in management, or alternatively, why they should avoid a career in management altogether. He also discusses why Shopify loves remote pair programming, how to find your voice as a developer and why writing a book can be a spiritual experience.
Episode Highlights Include:
- (4:06) Why so many devs are afraid of becoming managers
- (16:51) The 90-day management test
- (22:46) Remote work has increased dev productivity by default
- (27:47) Why Shopify loves remote pair programming
- (33:01) Finding your voice as a developer
- (41:17) Writing a book can be a spiritual experience
You're Invited to INTERACT on April 7th
Join engineering leaders from Netflix, Slack, Stack Overflow, American Express & more at LinearB's virtual engineering leadership conference, INTERACT on April 7th, 2022.
1 day, 20 speakers, 1,000s of engineering leaders - all driven by the Dev Interrupted community. If you are a team lead, engineering manager, VP, or CTO looking to improve your team, this is the conference for you!
Published at DZone with permission of Dan Lines, DZone MVB. See the original article here.
Opinions expressed by DZone contributors are their own.
Comments