Comment by throwaway284534
3 years ago
Seconding the Manager Tools podcast. I used to teach devs coming out of boot camps and half our time was spent on how to manage your manager.
IMO, schools of all kinds need to teach their students how power dynamics are in the real world, how most jobs are about navigating through difficult personalities, and how “being a professional” is not really about winning or losing, but how you play the game.
And look, I get that a good chunk of us would prefer to compartmentalize non-engineering work as much as possible. It’s just that knowing the rules is the best way to decide if you want to engage with them.
Do you have any resources that you recommend for a dev who's only been in tiny startups (10 people or less)
Personally, I’d aim for a new role at a medium or large sized company. Small startups are great if you want to wear a lot of hats and be close to the customer. Once a company starts getting around 50 people is when most of your job is abstracted through different fiefdoms of stakeholders, usually your project managers.
And at mega corps with 400+ people, most projects are being bolted onto a multi million dollar money printer. There’s so much more process to getting big changes out. But if you’re on the right team, you can build something novel and immediately have a market to test it out.