As a coder that's soon to be taking on a management responsibility, I definitely feel the weight of it, but I'm up for the task of figuring out leadership. I might well be more suited to it than a lot of engineers would, but I also think that management and leadership is less hard than it seems and that engineers would actually be better at it than their superiors if they would just give themselves a chance.<p>The trick to it is to realize that it's not, actually, a skill, when you break it down. It's an opportunity to structure part of the operation of the company the way you want to structure it. You can take all those ideas you have about how to run the company better and put them into practice on a small scale. You do not have to give up engineering, you're just also engineering at a bigger level than just with machines. You can and should still program, and still avoid pointless meetings by bringing your laptop to them and working through them.<p>You're engineering human systems now too. There's no conflict with the other machine-type engineering, because the two are intended to work in concert. So don't create one where it didn't before exist. Humans are easier to engineer than machines in many ways. You can tell a human to do what you mean, humans are smart and machines are stupid, a machine will only do what you tell it to do. You can't tell a machine to exercise judgment or grant them power or flexibility, they wouldn't know what to do with it. But grant flexibility to a human and he'll make your job much much easier.<p>Power necessarily involves freedom and flexibility, if you've an expectation to meet a responsibility without giving yourself the latitude to meet that expectation your own way, including the willingness to put your foot down to ensure your turf is protected, then you are putting yourself through hell. It's simple, decide what you need to get the job done, then acquire the resources, then follow through. If the expectation is unreasonable, then change the expectation. It's not hard, all you have to do is explain to people that it's unreasonable and offer an alternative. As an engineer, you should have already learned the skill of dazzling people with techno-babble. As a manager, they have to take your arguments seriously and compromise with you. You can't promote someone to management and then proceed to ignore their opinions. That's the whole point of the promotion.<p>I go home after eight hours. My boss will put in ten hour days but I won't volunteer to. I fully expect my new report will go home after eight like I do. When I wanted to move to flex time I just started coming in later and when my boss noticed, I just said I was going to choose my hours from here on out. My boss insulated me from office politics until I was ready to deal with it and I will extend the same protection to the new guy. I was somewhat worried that the promotion would come with strings attached. If anything they're more worried that I'll get cold feet than they are that I won't measure up. So they've been kissing my ass extra hard lately.