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Good engineers can become good leaders

Venkat Pulella
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Venkat Pulella
The most difficult transition many engineers make is from managing self to managing others. This can be traumatic for the manager as well as for the people around him, but with a little effort towards learning management, just like one learns technology, the whole experience could be made far better.

There is enough debate on whether management is an art or can be learned. There is also enough debate on whether leaders are born or made. I am sharing my experience in growing from a technical role to a manager and the difficulties I faced therein, with the hope that this awareness makes it easier for you to make the switch.

On a personal level
More often than not, as a team grows, the best technical person is made the manager. With little or no guidance, he discovers the art of managing by trial and error. My story is the same.

I discovered the joy of programming when I was in the second year of engineering. I wrote millions of lines of code as a programmer, enjoying it more than any thing else in my life. I had never expected that one day I would not want to write code. When the day came by, I decided to be a manager for the lack of an alternative.

My manager at the time had other thoughts. ‘You are not yet ready for the transition’, he’d told me. What ensued was the most difficult phase engineers in any product development company go through. I started building a healthy paranoia towards my manager and the management in general, even feeling like a victim at times.

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