A Tale of the Flip Floppers. From Engineer to Manager and Back Again

Hey, I'm Matt Coleman. I'm an engineering manager at Atlassian. And I'm so excited to be here today at React Day Berlin to talk to you about flip-flopping back and forth between engineer and manager. Now, that's something I've done many times in my career. I've probably got a few more in me to be honest. But I'm not crazy. You know, this is something that people actually do. And I want to talk to you about how it's actually a really good career move.

So, let's have a look at my career. This is it, in a picture. I started at Blake as a And about two or three years later, I got offered a promotion into management. And so there I was running about four developers and that turned into 10. A really great job. I loved it. But I started to miss the code a little bit. And I was very interested in React. So, I went over here at Play Up, and I learned React. And then a few years later, I kind of missed having the impact that a manager has. So, I moved to domain as a manager. Then over to Atlassian as a dev, where again, I learned some new technologies, GraphQL, Relay, a bunch of other different things that I didn't know about. And then once again, I got offered a role as a manager. This time it was a sideways move at Atlassian. And at Atlassian, the sideways move is quite encouraged. So, there's a lot of flip-floppers at Atlassian.

Now, who is this talk for? Well, it's for the flip-floppers, of course. And also, you know, if you're thinking, I might be a good manager, I'm not sure. Then this talks for you. Or maybe you are already a manager and you kind of miss being a dev. You miss the code. So, this talk's for you.

Dog lovers, this talk's for you. I mean, this talk's got something for everyone.

Now actually, the second time I did a flip-flop, a friend of mine said, oh, have you seen the engineer manager pendulum blog post by Mipsy Tipsy? And I hadn't, but I checked it out. It's a two-minute read and it's fantastic. I mean, it really resonated with me when I read this blog. And there are some great quotes here. Let me read one out for you. The best frontline eng managers in the world are the ones that are never more than two to three years removed from hands-on work. Full-time, down in the trenches. The best individual contributors are the ones who have done time in management. I couldn't agree more, go and check it out. It's a great blog.

All right, things that people tweet. It is still called Twitter, and it is still called a tweet. So if you're managing people and writing code, then you're doing a poor job at both. Have you ever heard this one before? Look, it's a great tweet, but Twitter lacks a lot of context. So, you know, it's actually maybe not a great tweet. It's kind of confusing for some people. I would say if you're managing three devs, then you probably should be writing code, because you won't have enough work to do otherwise, and you'll probably just spend your time annoying the three devs. So you keep writing code. However, if you're managing eight devs, then you have to understand that your velocity is no longer really significant. You've got enough devs to write code. So, you wouldn't write code for velocity. But there are still other reasons you might write code. Simply put, if the best thing for you to do that day is writing code, then you should do it. So, you might have a really difficult deadline, or you might want to pair-program with someone to build relationships or to learn. There are still a bunch of reasons why you can write code as a manager. And I say go for it. Becoming an engineering manager is a completely different role. It's a career change.

Dramatic? I think it's too dramatic. I mean, it's a different role. But if it's a career change, then I've changed careers seven times already, and I don't feel like that's the case. My skills in both roles are still very similar. So I wouldn't call it a career change at all. Don't be scared by that one.

Moving from dev to manager is not a promotion. It's a sideways move. An angry tweet. I've seen this one before. Look, you know, it really depends. Companies do it different. And I think it's a really good thing that companies do it in a different way. Because as you can see in my career, I did both. I had the promotion to get into it. And I probably never would have discovered management if it weren't for the promotion. However, at Lassian, we've got the sideways move, which is a really nice thing to have. And it doesn't encourage management for the wrong reasons.

So skills I've learnt as a manager that make me a better developer. There are a bunch. Again, I'm just trying to tell you about how it might actually be a great thing for your career to go back and forth. You're just improving different skills, but those skills are always transferable over to the other role. Same thing, skills that I've learned as a developer that make me a better manager. So there's a bunch there. I've always appreciated a manager with recent technical experience. You can have great conversations with them. That's just my preference. So whichever way you flip or flop, I think you do really come out as a super manager or a super engineer. And I've heard at Atlassian, people actually asking for, I'm trying to hire a senior engineer with prior management experience to boost the leadership in that team. Remember, leadership doesn't just come from the manager. It comes from the senior engineers as well. So if you are thinking about flipping over to management, then I say, just do it, go for it.