hypesafe's comments

I think secondcoming is interpreting "to educate" to mean "to be schooled / to be instructed" whereas others are interpreting "to educate" to mean "to provide information / to persuade with information". Both are viable meanings per Merriam Webster. The tone of the twitter thread led me to believe that the author was trying to convey the latter meaning which does not come across as pompous. However, if someone was to parse the earlier meaning from the thread I can see how it could be viewed as pompous.

I am in my late 30s and 8 months back I went through a similar phase where I just wanted to throw in the towel and call it quits. It initially manifested as procrastination. The weight of accumulated work kept increasing and it in turn furthered the feeling of helplessness and deep sadness about my mental state. Slowly I started seeing physiological changes - every Sunday evening I would get fever and chills just thinking about the work week that lay ahead. Slowly the fevers and chills started manifesting every night. Occasionally I closed myself in a room and cried for hours. That episode is mostly behind me now. Looking back it all started when 2 relatively major life changes coincided. Becoming a Father and an exceptionally demanding new boss at work. I felt like I could not live up to my partner’s expectations at home and my boss’s expectations at work. The lack of sleep and not having any family to help out with childcare during the pandemic made things worse. Eventually I did quit my job but at the urging of my partner did so only after I had found another job wherein company was flexible with the start date. It allowed me to take a complete break from work for 2 months and it made a world of difference. All through this I managed to fake enthusiasm and productivity at the previous workplace enough that I still got a great performance rating and a humbling retention offer to keep me there. So no not everyone is productive and enthusiastic all the time - several of us are going through crises. We just manage to hide it well.

Indian universities outside of the top rung (IITs et al.) have been issuing worthless degrees for at least 3 decades. In my state during the 90s tech/outsourcing boom a lot of corrupt politicians realized that engineering education was a gold mine and opened degree factories all over the state. I graduated from a supposedly "reputable" university in 2004 and was basically unemployable on graduation.

Looking back here are a few memories of my college education experience that stand out:

* 1 computer "lab" with 15 PCs shared amongst 720 students. Only 1 PC had a dial-up internet connection that rarely worked.

* Majority of the courses taught by industry rejects who were unemployable.

* Hilariously we learnt standard nix command line tools (sed , awk, filesystem commands etc.) by writing the commands and their outputs using a pen and paper never once using a real terminal + shell because the college did not have a single nix machine.

* "Systems Programming" professor walks in the first day and declares she cannot code in C and 8086 assembly which the course mandated. She encouraged us to seek external tutoring (coaching classes as they are known in India) instead of relying on her.

* There was small cottage industry that sold finished projects to students - including source code, project reports, electronic circuitry where applicable. About 30% of the class bought these “projects” off the shelf.

Thankfully my family was able to send me to an American university for a graduate degree allowing me to have a shot at a tech career. Now having lived and worked in the Bay Area for 15 years I can say that quality of education at an average community college in the US is far superior to the tier-2 / tier-3 universities in India.

I am a new manager. I made the developer to manager transition 14 months back. Educating yourself with books and podcasts is nice, however do not spend too much time on these resources too soon. Without appropriate breadth of experience a lot of the advice might not seem actionable. My advice would be to aim to become a great new manager first. Becoming a great leader and manager is a function of experience and will come with time and patience.

My advice for a new manager would be:

1. Bootstrap by emulating your manager. As a new manager now is not the time to demonstrate your grasp of modern management literature. Pitching too many new management ideas too soon will slow you down. Start by emulating your manager. Copy her 1-on-1 cadence. Copy her team meeting cadence. Parrot her words in your own team meetings. Her style might not be the best - but it the style she is most familiar with and it gives her an opportunity to work with something familiar and hence comforting. Once you have a semblance of a track record - start evolving your own style.

2. Prioritize the tactical vs the strategic. The first 6-12 months are about building your credibility as a manager. You will build credibility by executing on the immediate needs of the org. So first 6 months should be about tactical execution - once your team starts getting better at executing dial down and delegate the tactical and start focusing on the strategic.

3. Try not to expand too fast. As a new manager it might be tempting to grab all the head count that comes your way. However without scalable processes in place you are likely to have a large but miserable team. Ensure that you have appropriate automation for tracking individual + project progress on a daily / weekly basis. Ensure that you are competent enough to derive high signal-to-noise ratio in your 1-on-1's with your directs.

4. Treat administrative / HR tasks with great seriousness. As an individual contributor your engineering tasks took priority. Do not be that manager who forgets to approve expenses, approve PTOs etc. Have a rock solid understanding of compensation and bonus structures, criteria for salary raises etc. Saying "Why don't you reach out to HR" is a great way for your directs to lose confidence in you.