I have been promoted to a manager of my development team. It is an exciting shift in my career but not all of the changes are easy. The hardest is redefining my answer to the question “What do you do?” I never found an answer that the majority of people could connect with. I usually replied with a custom answer tailored to that person. But now the answer is easy to comprehend but hard for me to remember. “I’m a manager.” I don’t feel like one because I have been taking on responsibilities for a year. That will change once the team is fully staffed and I am managing people that have never worked beside me.
I’ll have my hand in the code for now but I know that I’ll be moving away from it. That isn’t easy for me because I don’t feel like I have accomplished enough in my years as a professional developer. But the more I think about where I would like for my development skills to be I realize that I just don’t have that desire in me. I had never been focused like my peers. I think of the big picture… other teams… clients… users. I prefer to work with user interfaces but I’m not a designer. I can dig deep but prefer not to. Now I really want to hire someone with my interests (but better skills!) It’s going to be a challenge.
My professional website used to refer to myself as a “web designoper”. I was even the first hit on Google for the term. Now there are a few others, including Brian Haslanger who defines the role as “A person who has skills in both design and web development; bred for its skills in magic.”
