There and back again: Lessons on entering middle management
summary
Promotion moves from managing two teams to seven teams and proves quantitatively costly: three years of good performance, constant firefighting, more inter-team conflict and big decisions like cut the budget by 15% become daily reality. Strategy work yields month‑long reward cycles, social distance grows, and personal priorities (two small kids, health) collide with role stress. The remedy is explicit: quit, reapply to a single‑team EM role to self‑select employers, and regain sustainable satisfaction.
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chapters (13)
- 0:00Introduction
- 1:03Senior dev to manager
- 2:27Disclaimers
- 3:30Losing team connection
- 4:34Conflict and frustration
- 5:36Firefighting and reflection
- 6:41Higher stakes
- 7:44Longer reward cycles
- 8:47Weight of responsibility
- 9:49Family and health
- 10:30Voluntary demotion
- 11:11Positive outcomes
- 11:54Key takeaways
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