In recent years, there’s been one constant in my professional career – “I want to dev”. There were roles offered to me that I didn’t take because there wasn’t enough dev. Even when working out my manager role’s responsibilities, the initial “25% of my job is dev” worried me. Too low I thought. But funny enough, as soon as I took the job, I tried to make my 25% go to 0%. That is, I’m trying to delegate all development of my old job. It’s actually pretty awesome – like a weight/responsibility has been lifted off my shoulders. However, a more important responsibility remains in its place.

So I’m not deving anymore – but I’m still walking around, helping the developers out. I find I’m probably helping out at least….6-8 times a day. Which is a lot. But I like it – I come in to help out, and then I step away. I’m just there to support my team – which is honestly what my role is all about: doing the best I can do to support my team.

As Development Lead/Manager, my responsibility is split in two: support my team and dev. That’s it. So the more I dev, the less I support my team. But while dev is fun, it really only helps me. When I support my team, I feel that I’m helping all 13+ of them. And it feels way better doing that than helping myself.

That said, it’s not to say I won’t ever dev – I figure that in my position, I can delegate all my work and take anything I really want for myself. But that hasn’t happened yet, I don’t see it happening for a while, and it might not ever happen while I’m in this role. But it’s nice to know that option is there. (I’m still doing my own dev FOR work, but not WORK TASKS if that makes any sense…so it’s a lot funner – no deadlines).

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“With Great Power comes Great Responsibility”

That line, from Spider-Man, has actually been running through my mind lately. As a dev, my responsibility was only towards myself. I didn’t have “great power” and thus, didn’t have “great responsibility”. I did what I could but felt no obligation to. When pressure was on me, I tried my best. But if I couldn’t do what was needed, I was fine with it. Can’t do more than my best. But in my new role, I have “great power” (not really “great”, more like “some”), but I FEEL that great responsibility. Everyone on my team is my responsibility and even though I’m their boss officially, I feel like they’re all my boss: I do what I can to support them. And in return, they also try to support me. It’s…a great feeling. I just wanna do as much as I can for them so that, in a couple years, when I walk away from the role, I’ll have known that I did my best trying to help each and every one of them in the best way I could have. THAT, is a feeling that I would cherish my entire life. To affect a person’s life, in a positive way. Or even better, affect 15-20 persons directly, in a positive way. It makes me giddy just thinking about it…..which will hopefully be the case. Unless I suck.

Didn’t know it would be announced so soon but…drum roll please?

I’m now a development manager with a pretty large team. Pretty crazy! O____O

I know I wrote a bit about management lately but those were pretty coincidental. I had been feeling this “what should I do next?” kinda feeling for over a month now, spoke to my manager a few weeks ago and it all sort of planted its own seeds from there. I had no idea things would be official so soon. I’m totally not prepared. (like, seriously, i wanted to read about stuff more and prepare more first – but there’s always time for that).

I’ve been thinking about a lot of things lately – basically, ways to make things better. I’ve seen the dev side and I think we could really use certain things (says the dev side of me) and hopefully that will be filled by whatever path I help choose to accomplish them (says the development lead in me). I think it’s awesome because I already have a pretty good to great relationship with the devs so I really want to focus on assisting in their growth as my managers and peers have done with me. I know the change in me within the last 7 years is dramatic and I feel crazy thankful to everyone who has influenced me – either shown me what to do, or even shown me what not to do (it was hard to be thankful for that, but looking back on it, it was useful).

My last two managers were/are both super great and I want the way I saw them to be the way my team sees me. I just want to follow their lead but provide some technical guidance along the way as well. I guess that’s my big goal – to not screw it up and to help my team wherever I can. :)