Is managing the wrong job for you?
Hi Everyone,
Not everyone wants to manage people. Plenty end up doing it anyway because the role came with more money, the title, and no real alternative.
What if you're one of them?
Gallup finds that managers spend about 40% of their week on individual work rather than leading others. For some, those are the best hours of the week. If that's you, it's worth reflecting on whether management is really where you want to be.
Today we're walking you through three checks that distinguish a hard first year from actually being in the wrong job, plus what to do with the answer.
Give it a year first
If you've been managing for less than a year, wait.
Linda Hill followed new managers through their entire first year on the job. Her finding: moving from doing the work to leading the people who do it changes how you see yourself, and that transition can take a year or even longer. Feeling clumsy at first is part of the learning curve.
So the first check is time. If you're under a year in, or you haven't yet been through one review cycle, one real conflict, and one difficult conversation, it's too early to call it a mismatch. What you're feeling is probably the job change, not the job itself.
Sort what you dislike into two lists
Past the first year and still unhappy? Write down everything you dislike about the role, then give each item one of two labels.
- The work itself: Coaching, delegating, giving hard feedback, getting results through other people instead of doing the work yourself.
- The conditions: Your own manager, a team with problems you inherited, no training, a company going through a rough period.
The distinction matters because conditions can change, but the core work of managing people doesn't.
If your list is mostly conditions, the job may be fine but the situation is a problem. Raise the biggest issue with your own manager before you change careers.
If your list is mostly about the work itself, that's a different signal. The core work of management will follow you to the next company, too.
Run the flat-pay test
Now imagine you could move back to the expert, hands-on work while keeping the same pay and title as a manager. Would you do it?
If the answer is yes, pay or status may be what's keeping you in management — not a love of managing. Check what a senior specialist actually earns at your company before assuming that path can't work for you.
Isn't going back a step down?
Charity Majors, who has moved between engineering and managing several times, says:
"Management is not a promotion; management is a change of profession."
If it was never a promotion, going back isn't a demotion.
And the decision doesn't only affect you. The team pays for a reluctant manager too. Gallup finds that managers account for at least 70% of the difference in engagement between teams. Your team feels it when you don't want the job.
If you're reading this as a founder or CEO, use the same three checks with a manager who keeps gravitating back to hands-on work.
Go deeper
👉 Charity Majors: The Engineer/Manager Pendulum — read this before you decide either way; it's the piece that normalized moving between the two tracks.
👉 Stack Overflow: How to land the manager-to-IC pivot — read how a HashiCorp cofounder and a design director made the move, and what they'd tell you to sort out first.
👉 First Round Review: An engineering leader's advice for pivoting from manager to IC — use this 90-day plan once you've decided to make the move.
👉 Lattice: Making the Move From Manager to Individual Contributor — for the company side of the conversation: how to handle the switch so both sides come out ahead.
Coming up next
On Thursday, we'll share how to say no to a colleague without making it awkward (or risky).
P.S. Even founders change their minds. Mitchell Hashimoto ran HashiCorp, the company he co-founded, then moved back to engineering to spend his days on code.