LTC#12 - Developer Wants To Be A Manager
How to balance a developer's management aspirations with business needs? What questions can help understand motivations, skills and expectations? How to support career growth in this situation?
Hi, this newsletter is a weekly challenge for engineers thinking about management. I'm Péter Szász, writing about my engineering leadership experience on my blog, and training aspiring and first-time Engineering Managers on this path. See more about what I can offer you at leadtime.tech.
In this newsletter, I pose a weekly EM challenge and leave it as a puzzle for you to think about before the next issue, where I share my thoughts on it.
Last Week's Challenge
Last week, one of our senior developers shared that she wants to transition to management. The situation is complex because she’s a key technical contributor, and there are no known EM openings at the company. Read the details here if you missed it.
I'll approach this situation with my usual three-step framework:
Goals to Achieve
Career Development: Support Kate's growth aspirations while being honest about current opportunities. I should probe her motivations and understanding of the EM role to be able to support her appropriately. The goal is to find ways for her to learn and grow in areas that can be used in both technical and managerial leadership positions.
Team Execution: Maintain our technical capabilities and delivery expectations. As Kate is a technical anchor, we must balance her growth with our team's technical depth and stability. I need to find a balance in transparency with the rest of the team so they understand what’s going on and can also support her growth.
Organization Benefit: Develop Kate as a potential future leader while maximizing her current contributions. Great companies develop talent proactively, not just reactively when a position opens.
Risks to Avoid
Binary Thinking: Seeing this as an "either stay technical or become a manager" decision could unnecessarily limit options. There's a spectrum of leadership opportunities between these poles. She needs to discover and understand what management means. We can do a lot of that while staying in her role, pushing her career decision to later when she’s more informed and confident in her choice.
Disengagement: Without a satisfying growth path, Kate might disengage and eventually leave. This would harm both her career and our team's capabilities. We should support her personal growth regardless of organizational opportunities.
Misalignment: Supporting a management transition without exploring Kate's true motivation could lead her toward a role she's not well-suited for or not motivated by, ultimately making her less fulfilled and effective.
Business Impact: Creating responsibilities that don't serve real business needs just to appease Kate would waste resources and potentially create future role confusion.
5 Questions
What's truly driving Kate's management aspirations? Is it that she genuinely enjoys developing people, facilitating team processes, and handling organizational dynamics? Or is it that she's feeling stagnant technically and sees management as the default next step? Understanding her deeper motivations will help shape the right development path. If she's primarily seeking growth and impact rather than management specifically, other paths might be more fulfilling — she might not be aware of the existence of these. These might include Staff/Principal Engineer, Technical Program Manager, Sales/Support Engineer, Product Manager, or technical specialist roles with broader influence. By widening the conversation beyond "IC vs. manager," we might find better fits for her skills and aspirations. But first, we need to understand the root of her motivations.
What leadership gaps exist in our organization? Even without formal EM openings, there may be under-addressed leadership needs that Kate could help with. Could she lead the interview process improvement? Own cross-team technical initiatives? Run mentorship programs? Manage an intern? The goal is to find real business needs that develop leadership skills, not make-work assignments. Sharing the situation and my plan with leadership would also allow them to think about Kate when planning a reorganization.
How can we create leadership experiences in her current role? Rather than waiting for an EM position, what opportunities could give Kate real leadership experience now? These might include running or facilitating team ceremonies, mentoring newer team members formally, representing the team in cross-functional meetings, or helping with hiring and onboarding. These experiences would build relevant skills and provide a clearer picture of whether management is truly her calling.
Recommended reading: On my engineering leadership blog, I listed 50 things developers can do to prepare for an Engineering Manager role here.How serious is Kate about changing paths? Would she leave if there's no clear transition opportunity in the next 6-12 months? Understanding her timeline helps prioritize actions and have honest discussions about what's realistic. If she's determined to become a manager soon, we should support her getting the necessary skills here, while eventually networking with other teams or even other companies rather than trying to retain her in a role that no longer fits her goals. This would maintain the trust we have and could help us build a sustainable offboarding plan.
Does Kate truly understand what the EM role entails? She only saw us working in team and individual 1:1 settings, but a big part of EM work is outside of team context. Is she familiar with stakeholder management, planning, interviewing, supporting, performance managing, and other Engineering Management expectations? She needs this insight to be able to make the right decision.
Did I miss any important aspects of handling this leadership development challenge? What experiences do you have with supporting career transitions in your teams? Let me know in the comments!
This Week's Challenge
You've been assigned to lead a team known for missed deadlines and high turnover. In your first two weeks, you discover a deeply divided team culture that has evolved from technical disagreements into personal animosity.
What began as debates over architecture and tooling has morphed into a toxic environment where team members have formed opposing factions. The rift appears personal now – people dismiss ideas based on who proposes them rather than their merit. Team meetings are tense and unproductive. Some members remain silent entirely, while others only speak when their allies are present. New joiners quickly learn which "side" they're expected to choose.
The previous manager tried addressing specific conflicts as they arose but never tackled the underlying trust issues before transferring elsewhere. Your director's expectation is clear: transform this dysfunctional environment into a collaborative team that delivers reliably—within three months.
What do you do?
Think about this challenge, what would be your immediate goals, what questions would get you closer to achieving them, and what risks you’d like to avoid. I’ll publish my approach next week - make sure you’re subscribed to receive it on time.
Until then, here's a small piece of inspiration to match this week's challenge:
See you next week,
Péter