I remember a conversation I had with a friend 8 years ago. Our CVs almost started to have some entries as we were substituting hoppies “i like to walk and play football” with 3 months internship at some company where i learned to work under stress and tight deadlines. I was arguing that coding is my virtue in and on itself. And that being a project manager or any manager for that matter is not better. Perhaps we didn’t define the definition of “better” here as that would had untangled the argument. My friend’s argument retrospectily now was rather more mature. He said something along the lines of you cannot just be a developer in order to grow you need to be a PM or a Manager. Coincidentally another friend (developer as well) from my circle of whom i admired a lot – she also “jumped” to a business role. Life is strange also. Since then i had went through roles where the business expectations for me was usually those you would expect of a manager. I had my nice share of failures too but in many cases being a strong on the technical side helped my bosses to ignore my lack of management skills.
But why was my preferences to code. Huge part of that will be purely personal preferences. I like code, I’m good at code I suck at dealing with people. Granted, these 3 dimensions are learnable: that is to say they can be acquired, and they can get rusty if unused for good time. They are also not mutually exclusive. I happen to met some of the best coders and they are extremely well as managers too. Looking back I think I had made the right decision. As I met and interacted with different managers I cannot help but admire their qualities. There’s a scrutiny over managers in reddit and internet cycles. I’m not here to address that part and it is out of this post scope. Navigating politics and dealing with people is a lot more complex than code. It is unfair to even compare the two. also different mindsets. I remember many cases where there’s a problem. Production issue, risky delivery, change of requirements or all of software surprises. My instinct is always this: ok let’s fix that problem. I jump immediately to the code. My manager would be asking totally different questions: why did this happen, how it happened, where was the gap etc. Neither of those approaches are binary right or wrong. But each answers to different stakeholders.
What I’m trying to answer here through this text is a message to fresh grads and early career. Coding is an art, it is captivating, it is something of a beauty. You get to build things and if you are into that type of stuff, building things then nothing can top coding on this arena. And you will be inclined to consider other titles within the ecosystem. Nothing is wrong with that. But you do not have to. You can still and always remain as just a coder.