Andrea | Code to People

7 yrs managing technical teams. I write about the IC-to-manager transition, the mistakes nobody warns you about & the people skills that outlast any tech stack.

[Andrea | Code to People @codetopeople]

1/ Everyone's suddenly deciding whether managers are even necessary anymore.

I've been managing technical teams for 7 years and I think the bar is getting higher, not lower.

Here's why:

[Andrea | Code to People @codetopeople]

@elwatto Love this reflection. I think about this a lot and I agree that trust is what makes compounding possible. It’s the difference between your team scaling and your team slowly falling apart without you knowing.

[Andrea | Code to People @codetopeople]

@SahilBloom This is so important for managers. I manage analysts across different levels and they all need something different. Same approach across everyone means you're probably managing most of them wrong.

[Andrea | Code to People @codetopeople]

@Yuchenj_UW Managers don't get this luxury though. Your team are the paid subscribers and the low-quality prompts are still your job to answer.

[Andrea | Code to People @codetopeople]

@Keerthi_InIT Same thing happening at my company. We went from "everyone needs to be using AI" to losing our Claude licenses. No strategy on the way in, no strategy on the way out!!

[Andrea | Code to People @codetopeople]

@1ssve Why is this so common? Same thing happened to me. Left a great company because of it. As a manager, I can't imagine doing this to anyone.

[Andrea | Code to People @codetopeople]

@sharran As a manager, the one I like the most is rule #2. Showing up to a 1:1 without an agenda isn't casual, it's telling the other person you didn't think about them before walking in.

[Andrea | Code to People @codetopeople]

@BoringBiz_ Fired the team to save money. Now paying $100k/month in tokens and has nobody left who understands the output 😭

[Andrea | Code to People @codetopeople]

@McKinsey Agree. Managers and leaders need to stay up to speed with AI and understand it's capabilities + leverage it hands on. If they remain detached, they will end up leading a team speaking a different language and fail.

[Andrea | Code to People @codetopeople]

I've been saying this for a year. McKinsey just put a chart to it. Leadership, empathy, influencing skills = least exposed to automation. The people who invest in people skills right now are building the moat everyone else is ignoring.

[McKinsey Global Institute @McKinsey_MGI]

AI won’t make most human skills obsolete, but it will change how they’re used.

MGI’s Skill Change Index shows which skills will be most, and least, exposed to automation: https://t.co/BIUzxV3CtQ

[Andrea | Code to People @codetopeople]

@McKinsey_MGI Leadership, empathy, influencing skills = least exposed to automation. The data says the same thing I've been saying. The people who invest in people skills right now are building the moat everyone else is ignoring.

[Andrea | Code to People @codetopeople]

@lennysan @molly_g I love this! From my experience managing teams in tech, most managers tend to go straight to "it's a people problem." But 9/10 times it's actually unclear goals or overlapping roles. Most times "snorkeling" is all it takes!

[Andrea | Code to People @codetopeople]

The "managers are dead" takes are missing something. Yes, pure people managers who've lost touch with the work are in trouble. But that's always been true.

What nobody is saying: as everyone races to become more technical and AI-fluent, people leadership becomes rarer. The manager who can stay close to the work AND develop their team is not being replaced. They're becoming harder to find.

[Andrea | Code to People @codetopeople]

I think it depends what domain you work in! But I oversee an analytics team, so as part of a portfolio I would love to see examples of:

- past analyses where you took a messy dataset and turned it into a clear recommendation
- a case where your analysis or model helped make a decision
- examples of dashboards you've built
- any self-initiated work

[Andrea | Code to People @codetopeople]

@jaynitx I agree, and the irony is that companies with the most resources to invest in AI are the least equipped to change how they operate. Smaller companies can move and adapt faster since they don't have so many legacy systems and layers of approval to get through.

[Andrea | Code to People @codetopeople]

@shafu0x Agreed. 3 months usually means too many people involved and no one willing to make the call.

[Andrea | Code to People @codetopeople]

@itsnwts Real estate costs 🥲

[Andrea | Code to People @codetopeople]

@staysaasy Literally what managers are for. Turns out someone has to break the tie 🙃

[staysaasy @staysaasy]

Right on AI belongs to ICs.

Hey what happens when two ICs disagree. Asking for a friend.