The pros and cons of becoming a manager

It's always important to consider as many factors as possible when deciding to undertake this journey. So, let's take a balanced view and explore both the pros and cons of becoming a manager.

The road ahead to becoming a manager is quite complex. The journey requires navigation, planning, and a mindful acceptance that you might make a wrong turn here and there before you reach the finish line. Without this planning, you're likely to get very frustrated and give up at the first hurdle. For some people, that's enough to decide that they don't want to take the journey.

You should certainly consider whether becoming a manager advances your career, your happiness, or perhaps a mixture of both. Likewise, whether your journey will be slow or fast, because balancing your professional and personal ambitions can be difficult to achieve along the road ahead. At times, you will need to concentrate on one of your ambitions and sacrifice or postpone your other ambitions.

This might already be true in your life now as a developer, but by becoming a manager, you risk your work taking over more of your life than you might expect. For example, you might suddenly find yourself bringing home emotional baggage from the office, because being a manager can put you in challenging people situations. While taking these manager type challenges home for some private contemplation may ultimately help you achieve a better outcome, it comes at a price of less personal space and downtime to relax for your own wellbeing. And of course, some situations may also affect you very directly and emotionally.

Another consideration is whether becoming a manager fits your natural talents, and whether you think you'll be any good at being a manager. At the end of the day, we are all different, and our talents are all unique; everyone has their own unique set of strengths and weaknesses, and their own likes and dislikes.

Being a developer is different from being a manager in that your focus will change from writing code yourself to helping others write quality code. As we've already mentioned, people are different – so some of us will naturally be more suited to becoming a manager than others.

It's also quite natural to worry that since you're a good developer you might not be so good at being a manager. Why become a manager and potentially stop doing what you're doing so well? There are so many things that you can learn about software development. But the biggest consideration is most probably, what if you fail?