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.