Day Two Cloud 114: Successfully Transitioning From A Tech Role To Management

Today’s Day Two Cloud podcast topic is about moving from a tech role into management. Is it a good idea? Why might you want to make the change? How can you do it successfully? Our guests are Josh O’Brien, VP of Technical Operations at Sauce Labs; and Greg Colburn, Director – Engineering Technologist at Dell Technologies. We discuss: * The path from tech work to management * Lessons learned from being managed * Real-life management challenges * Management vs. leadership * Mistakes and successes * Personality traits that are helpful for being a manager * Whether management is the end-goal of a career * More Takeaways: Management is not for everyone. Your career can continue to progress as an IC. Be aware of who you really are. Being a technologist is distinct from being a manager. Engage with your existing manager if you think you want to be a manager. They will have a good idea if you’re a fit. But be in a good mental place (true self-awareness) before having that conversation so you can face reality appropriately. Sponsor: CBT Nuggets CBT Nuggets is IT training for IT professionals and anyone looking to build IT skills. If you want to make fully operational your networking, security, cloud, automation, or DevOps battle station visit cbtnuggets.com/cloud. Show Links: Managerial Leadership – Greg Colburn via LinkedIn @joshobrien77 – Josh O’Brien on Twitter @gdcinclt – Greg Colburn on Twitter Transcript: [00:00:00.470] – Ethan Sponsor CBT Nuggets is IT training for IT professionals and anyone looking to build IT skills. If you want to make fully operational your networking, cloud security, automation or DevOps battlestation, visit CBT Nuggets. Com cloud that’s CBT Nuggets. Com cloud. [00:00:25.040] – Ned Welcome to Day Two Cloud. Today’s topic is moving into management. Is it a good decision? We’re going to talk to some folks who have made the transition and done it in a fairly successful way. We’ve got Josh O’Brien, the VP of technical operations for Sauce Labs, and Greg Colburn, director engineering technologist for Dell Technologies. I have interacted with Greg a bunch in the past, Ethan you’re a longstanding friend of Josh? [00:00:54.260] – Ethan A friend and former employee. Josh actually hired me once, and we worked together for, I don’t know, a good year and a half, two years at a company working on some things. This is an interesting recording, Ned, because, you know the show that we recorded a few weeks back. By the time this goes out where you and I were talking about some of the mistakes we made as management. Well, that or as managers taking the job, maybe you shouldn’t. Well, some of that came out articulated pretty well, but then the points were made of what kind of a person you need to be if you’re going to be successful. [00:01:31.770] – Ethan As a manager. And I think in this episode that resonated for me way more than what not to do. It’s easy to know what not to do but what to do and what kind of personality traits you need to have to be successful as a manager is a pretty different conversation. And that was a good bit of what we chatted about today. [00:01:47.940] – Ned Yeah, just being okay with the fact that maybe you aren’t going to be a good manager and you don’t have to be a manager that really resonated with me as well. So enjoy this conversation with Josh O’B...