I’ve been writing a series of posts on management based on my experiences. If you’re starting with this one, you may want to have a look at: https://www.jlgoodwin.com/words-pictures/2020/9/17/management-the-job-of-a-manager

Introduction

I’ve been retired (as of this writing) for about nine months and it is the end of the year, so I’ve been assessing my response to this new state of being. Overall, I’m very happy, and I’m a lot more relaxed. People see me on zoom calls and they comment that I look “better.” I have plenty of things to do, and I also have become comfortable putting any of them aside for weeks or months if I feel like doing something else, or nothing. Writing this series of blog posts about management has been an interesting project because it has caused me to stretch my memory back over the years to find stories that would illustrate my points. Back at the beginning of this process, even before I had formally retired, I started a list post entitled “Things I won’t miss.” My wife and most marvelous editor read it and said “Oooh, harsh, perhaps not yet?” and so I’ve been holding on to that one. But, the process also begs the question: “What will you miss?” I’ve been thinking about that too… here we go.

Stress

I honestly also enjoy not having work stress, despite the fact that I actively sought it through my entire career. You become addicted to stress over the years. There is a rush that you get when you sense that things are heading in the wrong direction and you need to do something. There is a “jumping out of the plane” sort of feeling when you embark on a project that you don’t know how to finish. There is a wave of relief when something you’ve been trying to steer in a good direction finally bears fruit. It is an element of my personality that I chose increasingly challenging work to amplify these sorts of feelings. I never had good luck trying to coast in a less challenging context; it’s always made me unhappy. My working-class background also reinforced this need in order to feel secure. I’ve identified all those elements and understood how it’s affected me, and I realized that I’ve had enough of that for a lifetime. Many of the projects I’m doing now involve learning stuff I’m not good at, which makes a good surrogate.

Hiring people

I used to hate interviewing people, being responsible for hiring people, and worrying if they were going to do okay. My last few roles were at a level where I had to do a lot of hiring and do it well or I was going to fail. I got a lot better at hiring and my perspective on it changed. I started to enjoy finding people who were great at what they did and needed to be given more responsibility to get to the next level and hiring them into roles that would give them that. I learned a lot about that on a project where we built a whole new product staffed only with me, a senior engineer, and a few interns (to start). I gave the interns that worked for us full responsibility for building the product (okay, I gave them architecture and some fundamental technology choices, and some guidelines). It was impressive to me that even though they had to redo some things and overcome their own lack of confidence in some cases, they produced what we needed and they became confident engineers at the end of six months. I think they got a lot out of it, and I enjoyed it. It strongly influenced how I built teams after that and what I looked for in candidates. The number one thing I looked for from there on was the spark of creativity and the drive to make things and share them with people. Hiring is definitely a management superpower and it has a huge impact on the people being hired and the team you hire them into. I’ve reshaped whole teams by hiring the right people into key roles. I’m glad that I got to do that and I’m not sure exactly what will take its place.

Collaborating

Being an introvert, I am not good at joining groups and I actively avoid it. The reality of the working world is that I had no choice but to overcome my aversion and join lots of teams, in lots of different roles. In the best case where the folks that I was collaborating with were all at my level or a bit above, and we all respected each other and delivered our part of the job, it was a great feeling. I’ve formed a few teams like that and I could always tell when they’d jelled just by the feeling they gave me. It is such an emotional support when things aren’t going well and there are a whole group of people who understand and are engaged in fixing things with you. I think I’ll go forward having a looser engagement with folks by sharing my projects and getting input from friends and interested parties. We’ll see.

Customers

I enjoyed seeing what customers would do with the software I helped create. They often imagined uses that I had never even considered. Working with customers gave me a fascinating glimpse into businesses I never would have seen otherwise. The people themselves were often brilliant, driven and creative. I would never have met or interacted with these folks had I not worked in the software industry. There is something very satisfying when you see someone use your software and get something out of it. The feeling was similar to when I was cooking for a living, and that was even better, because it was very immediate. Of course, this is another element of work that has a downside as well, but I’d say on balance it was a big motivator for me.

Finally

These are the big things. I’m not going to list all the minor items. I’m not going to include coding because I intend to keep doing that. I’m not going to say “the people,” because I hope to be friends with many of them for years to come. Okay, now I’m off to edit the “Things I won’t miss” post into a shorter, more focused list.