In my background I taught high school English for a few years, and while I wasn't that great at it, I will always remember when a student's eyes lit up when something clicked in their heads. When a joke Shakespeare made finally made sense, or when the magic of poetry moved them to tears, or when they found themselves surprised to relate to Scout in "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee. In that sense, being a manager is also about being a mentor. Helping an engineer fix a bug, resolve an interpersonal conflict, improve their mental well-being, help them level up their careers... all of that is rewarding. Helpful. Making things better. And that's just awesome. Who wouldn't want to do that?

While I have been extremely privileged in my life, I have also suffered through some personal tragedies and lived with things I wouldn't wish on my worst enemies, and those were things that were and are beyond my control. So in many ways, I crave control over my life and my destiny, and that's something I'll never have if I'm on the receiving end of a to-do list. The higher up I go in an organization, the more control I have over my destiny. I can choose which projects I want to work on, and I can delegate the things I don't. (In reality, I often find myself taking the projects that others do not want to do, but since it's my choice to do so, I still satisfy my objective.)

I am not interested in micromanagement. I do not rule by iron fist. I believe that I cannot make you do anything you do not want to do. I operate by consensus and collaboration, by radical candor, and by building trust with my teams so that when I ask them to do something, they want to do it because they trust that I have their best interests at heart, and that I'm not going to screw them over. In many ways, this is the reward for me.

I've been a loner my entire life. I don't have many friends. The friends that I do have all moved away over the years, and so now my social life is almost entirely online. But having a team that I can talk to at work, that trust me and believe in me and whom I can trust and believe in, that root for me and my success just as much as I root for them and theirs... That fills a lot of that void in my life, and it helps a lot in my quality of life. You don't need to be a manager to have this, but it helps. Most engineers operate in very small silos, but as a Director-level, I get to interact with a larger team of dozens of people per day. It helps.

In many ways, the reasons I wanted to go into management have to do with filling the voids in my own life: my feeling of lack of control, my lack of great social skills and close friends, my imposter syndrome, my desire to make a difference in the world, my disabilities and my weaknesses.

A computer will exactly what I ask it to do, without question and without deviation, for better or for worse. It doesn't talk back, it doesn't get excited when a problem is solved, it doesn't invite me to its weddings or birthday parties, it doesn't want to talk about the latest Bridgerton/The Expanse episode, it doesn't do anything except execute on its own code.

But a human? That's a whole different ballgame. Humans are challenging and frustrating, addicting and rewarding. And I hope that at the end of the day, when my employees sign off and go spend time with their friends and family, that they've contributed something to themselves or to the world around them. Kind of cheesy, but it's how I feel on my good days.

Hope that helps.