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What I learned in my first year of being a Manager

Neha Sharma on August 06, 2020

A year back I started my new role as UI Manager. I was very scared as throughout my life I was not so impressed by the managers and I always prefer...
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Aniket Kadam

Always great to see managers who really care about what they're doing with the people who report to them. Need a lot more people like you and thanks for writing this so people can have some idea of the right things to do.

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Martin Belev

Great article 🙌. I am in a team lead position for around a year now and I could say I share the same thoughts. I was thinking before what are those people doing - meeting here, meeting there, speak with this person, speak with the other person and the day is off. However, working with people is by far the most difficult thing IMO. I can't even try to compare them with coding 🤷‍♂️.

We should learn to be a little bit a psychologist because every person is different and they should be approached differently. So giving feedback, talking about their growth path, even writing PR comments can differentiate per person. We should put ourselves in one's shoes and try to understand their situation. For example, someone can have a decrease in productivity and we shouldn't hurry and be judgemental - we all go through some shitty periods, have personal problems, .etc, so this is pretty normal. We should try and understand what people are going through. Providing an environment in which everybody will feel safe to do that is very important.

I have always liked "Lead by example". I think in similar positions, we should be a role model for other people and inspire them to become better every day. In my eyes, this is not only for purely technical skills but for life in general. If we can grow together in every direction, the better.

Stopping my thoughts here because it is starting to become like a sub-post 😁. Maybe I will invest some time to structure all of my thoughts and experience for the time being and write a similar article with them.

However, great post and learnings Neha. 💪

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Neha Sharma

Thank you so much!!!

Looking forward to your article

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Hemant Joshi

It was great for me to go through the post and I realized a lot of lessons of my life currently I am 18 and see myself as a successful in 20es of my life.

Can you please explain

2) The process is very important

I am a very process-oriented person. I know folks who don't like the process at all and they believe that without process they can be more productive and push things quicker.

But I learned while at the other side of the table that having the process of everything will not just help the team but manager too. By defining the process of everything it helped me to avoid many ad-hoc meetings, questions, doubts, etc.

As a result, we shared our process with the other teams too.

What do you mean by process?

Is anyone interested in "An advice to 18 Yo guy"?

Thank You.

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Neha Sharma

Process from Manager presepctive:

1) The code guidelines
2) How to start with any story or module
3) Process of how the code will get merged to the master
4) Process of defects cycle and build process
5) Process of taking new requirements from the customer
6) Process of over all project development

Eg: it is part of the process to have the designs or UX screens to be freezed and approved by the product manager before development start. It is the part of the process that what all the 'defect states and priorities' would be? and many more such thing

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Ian Rathbone

All really good points! I’m on a similar journey myself having gone back to a management role last year. It’s a brave step to take, but selfless wanting to make a positive difference! Good luck!!

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Neha Sharma

Thank you!!

I also worked with many bad managers and very few good managers.

My first thought as a manager is always- "We are human first. What if my manager will do something like this with me?".

My director gave me this advice - "Be that kind of manager with which you would like to work".

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Txai

Nice post! I guess I never took time to see things from a manager perspective. Thank you for sharing what you learned

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Jacob Camacho

Been on this site for months and this is the first post I liked! Kudos!

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Shad Mirza

Great article. You shared a lot of really good insights.
I would request you to write about how to approach 1:1.

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Neha Sharma • Edited

I have 10 years of experience in coding. I still code. When you compare doing coding vs managing people ...I feel code is much easier to do than managing people and getting out work from them.

My advice to you: Do not write anything if you don't know me and my experience.

These are my learnings & I am not here passing my judgments for anyone.

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Sreetam Das

maybe, just maaaybe, there are people better than you are.

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Chatchai Komrangded (Bas)

Love this, and thank for your experience sharing Neha.