Some of us just aren’t meant to be managers. It's something I recently discovered about myself.
My journey into management is a common one. I was a high performing IC, I was a tech lead, and I was given the opportunity to build a data engineering team beyond myself. I never really saw myself as a manager to be honest. It wasn’t something I was striving for. It was never my end goal. I always looked up more to staff and principal engineers, and saw myself there someday. But it seemed like a great way to test the waters and see if it was a role I enjoyed.
It didn’t work out exactly as I expected…
The company went into a hiring freeze right after my role changed to “data engineering manager”, so for a while I was a “manager” to a team of zero, doing my own thing. Eventually, someone on our analytics engineering team who was interested in data engineering transferred to my team. So then I was a manager of one. And then one of our other analytics managers left, and in the hiring freeze, I was asked to take over their team. So then all of a sudden I was managing my team of one data engineer, and a team of three analytics engineers focused on product analytics.
My experience in this role was a positive one. I was still doing a lot of hands-on data engineering work, and the product analytics team was strong so I didn't really need to do too much to keep them on track. I was still doing IC work, as well as coaching the new data engineer. I was running sprint planning for both teams. I was communicating with stakeholders. I was planning and running projects across the team and the company. Thinking back on it, it was more like a Staff role in reality, just with a manager title.
Eventually though, I felt that it was time to move on and I was faced with the decision of staying on the management track or trying to find a technical IC role. I ended up having two offers: one was a pure management role with a small team already in place, and the opportunity to hire more data engineers. The other was the first data hire with the potential to build a team in the future. It was a really tough decision. I thought about what I really wanted to be doing, what I wanted to learn, and the skills I wanted to improve.
I went with the data engineering manager offer. In my mind, my only experience as a manager was with teams I didn't get to build and that was something I thought I wanted to do. Based on my experience in my first management role, the expectations I had about what this role was going to be like didn’t quite match reality.
I don’t regret my experience at all, it gave me the opportunity to figure out my path. However, it was a time of intense self-reflection and emotional turmoil. I learned a lot about myself, which in my mind is extremely valuable. At first I thought I just needed to stick it out until the discomfort of doing something new eased up. I was learning and growing for the better, right? I couldn’t put my finger on it, but something just didn’t feel right.
What I realized was that not all challenges are created equal. I grew up a competitive athlete, and I was a competitive athlete in college. I’d consider myself a competitive person and I love pushing myself and challenging myself. I’m happiest when learning and improving. In school, I loved the challenging courses I took. I would relish in the times where I couldn't figure out a problem, and for some reason my brain would solve it as I was about to fall asleep and I'd jump out of bed to write it down before I forgot. When I got into data, I loved the technical challenges I was faced with and the feeling of discovering the solution. I strived to push myself to the next level, to the next most challenging problem, to the more technical concepts. And on top of that, I really enjoyed sharing with others what I had learned so they could learn it too.
What I discovered is that people problems can not be solved like technical problems. I love the feeling of solving a technical problem. It gives me that dopamine hit. People problems though? I don’t get satisfaction from solving them, if they even can be solved (people are complicated). Reeling over a management problem brought me deep anxiety (and months of incurable insomnia). Nothing like the enjoyment of the puzzle of solving a technical problem. My being was rejecting every second of it.
It’s not that the work was necessarily harder (though it was uncomfortable in some cases). I was working normal hours, I was delivering, the team was delivering, people were happy with what we were doing. This was purely internal. It was like my brain was rejecting this type of work and throwing a tantrum. The type of work I was doing on a daily basis just wasn’t filling my cup. It wasn’t making me feel fulfilled. And that took a really drastic toll on my mental health.
I found myself extremely drained at the end of each work day, each week taking all I had in me. I felt like a shell of a person. I just wanted to curl up on the couch and watch netflix and recharge my batteries, just to do it all again. I didn’t feel like myself. I didn’t feel inspired or motivated. I felt burnt out.
About 6 months into my new role, I ended up going into an anxiety episode that lasted for days before I went to see my doctor (I didn’t know what was happening to me at the time). I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t have caffeine without feeling like my heart would explode, I couldn't focus, my emotions were on edge. After this, I started to experience chronic insomnia, which is something I have never had problems with before (and I am still trying to recover my normal sleep patterns).
Exercise and being active has always been an outlet for me, and that seemed to be the only thing that helped me feel even a little bit better, keeping me sane enough to keep going. But it wasn’t enough.
I would tell myself, it’s just something you’ll get used to. You're adjusting and things will get better. Things will get easier. I really don’t like to quit things, so I gave myself a year, and if I still didn’t feel right I would make some changes (I lasted 4 more months).
I did everything I could to ease the anxiety I was feeling on a daily basis. I started my meditation practice again. I took supplements I heard would help. I stopped all caffeine. I bought a weighted blanket to see if it would help me sleep. I went on more walks during the day. I journaled. I wrote down things I was grateful for each morning. I took cold showers. Nothing made a dent. And it wasn’t sustainable.
I read articles, listened to management podcasts, I took online management courses, I talked to so many wonderful managers in my life in hopes that they would tell me the magic thing that I was missing.
Through all of this, all of the chats, all of the venting I did to my friends, my family, my mentors, I came to the realization that maybe this just isn't meant for me. Why am I trying to force something that isn’t making me happy?
Not all challenges are created equal. If I know that I love a challenge and these challenges are not making me happy (and actively hurting my mental health), maybe it's the wrong type of challenge for me. And that's okay.
Thankfully, I have supportive managers and leaders I work with and I was able to work up the courage to tell them how I was feeling. I wasn’t made to feel bad or that I had failed. In fact, they were happy for me for coming to this realization about myself and wanted to see me succeed and be happy. Fortunately, there happened to be an opportunity available to transfer to another role as an IC within the data team, and that's exactly what I did. I already feel a sense of relief and like I’m back where I belong. I still have some recovering to do, don't get me wrong, but I’m starting to feel like myself again.
Not all of us are meant to be managers, and that’s okay. There may even be phases of life where we’re meant to manage and some where we’re not. It’s all about listening to yourself and doing what’s best for you in that moment, in that phase of life. Maybe my reaction was an extreme case, but if someone out there can even relate just a little bit, I hope they can take this as a sign to do some self reflection and figure out what path they really want to be on.
For me, right now, I’m not meant to be a manager. I am grateful I was able to try and learn so much more about myself in the process. I am grateful for the people in my life that helped me move through this turbulent time and come out better for it.
Life is short. Looking back, I wish I had said something sooner instead of struggling internally for so long. No job is worth your mental health. If you even feel a tiny bit like the way I did, really take a step back and consider things. If you’re unhappy in your career, job, relationships, or anything else, do something about it! Change it. I won’t say that it’s easy, but it will be worth it.
Some resources that helped me:
“Geriatric data science: life after senior - Luca Belli” (link)
Lots of Charity Majors’ writing: