How To Feel Productive As a New Manager / Tech Lead

This resource first appeared in issue #59 on 29 Jan 2021 and has tags Technical Leadership: Software Development, Technical Leadership: Other, Managing A Team: Other, Becoming A Manager: Other

Questionable Advice: “How do I feel Worthwhile as a Manager when My People are Doing all the Implementing?” - Charity Majors>
The Non-psychopath’s Guide to Managing an Open-source Project - Kode Vicious, ACM Queue

Majors’ article is a good reminder for new managers that it’s really hard to recalibrate job satisfaction or the feeling of accomplishment when you’ve moved into management. All you can do is focus on the big, long timeline stuff while still taking joy in the little moments, and make sure that you’re a source of calm not chaos in a crisis.

Vicious takes on the same topic but from the point of view of a new open source maintainer, which is managing a software development team in hard mode. Most of the same rules apply.