Your lucky, I have been trying to get out of coding and into management..
@kevindavis Ha! To tell you the truth, if I could dig ditches for a living instead, I would.
I'm actually between positions right now. I'm at the point where I will only consider positions where I have a true seat at the table, like CTO. At the same time, I'm not really looking, because being an IT executive sucks eggs.
Despite the title, you are treated as a short-order cook. Product always wants work done faster, but often won't compromise to create a reasonable solution. You'll spend time defending velocity while some product schmuck is demanding the umpteenth re-skin of your site, despite the fact that the re-skin doesn't really generate ROI. It just looks "better" to their aesthetic. Meanwhile, engineers tend to be some of the smartest people in the company. They'll have half-a-dozen ideas that can move the needle *right now*, but are treated like second-class citizens. You have to claw and fight to be heard. That only serves to give you a reputation for being "hard to work with" because you aren't being obsequious to the product organization or the rest of the business.
All this is happening while you are building up tech debt due to the pace that has been commanded of you. You're never given any time to go back and deal with the tech debt, but - holy sh!t - the day the site goes down, you'll be sitting in the CEO's office explaining what went wrong, whose fault it was, and how we can "make sure it never happens again." Just forget any recommendations to handle tech debt - that's off the table. No, no, no - you need to ensure that you have more code reviews, and better governance to things going to production... so long as you don't miss a date.
And let's not forget the people you manage. They're great. They're some of the smartest people you'll ever meet. They are also a unique class in the business world that range from OCD to ADD to insomniac manic-depressives. No one in upper management appreciates the fact that you keep a talented team working for the company despite the engineers getting 20 calls a week from recruiters offering new jobs with more pay.
Engineering management is basically all the responsibility for everything that happens in a product/tech company with very little REAL authority to actually change things.
Sigh.
I had a couple drinks tonight, so I'm ranting a bit.
Right now, I'm just hoping I can earn enough money trading stocks to never go back.