Programmer to PM

Raymond Chen is an expert programmer at Microsoft and he recently had this blog post in which he quotes another programmer that became a project manager. That programmer eventually left that role and went back into full-time programming again.

This colleague was writing to explain that his social skills had improved and his desire for social activities had greatly increased once he went back to programming. The role of project manager demands that you can talk to anyone about anything at any time. You're there to help resolve problems, answer design questions, work with upper management, etc. People came at you from all sides. As a consequence of all this social stuff every day, this person found that he unintentionally tried to avoid social situations once work was done for the day, just to recharge his batteries.

I've made similar transitions myself in the past at work. Right now, I'm a project manager again and by coincidence I think that I have been exhibiting similar symptoms. Granted, I am an excellent project manager and I really do help many other people get their jobs done more easily and quickly. As an intravert, though, this extracts a certain personal cost from me since I definitely need my alone time. A couple of my friends have recently made comments about this to me and I didn't put two and two together until I saw that blog post.

I don't really have any conclusions about this. I don't intend to go back into full-time programming again, I merely program as a "pinch hitter" when we need something done fast. I suppose I'm just acknowledging the fact that others share my experience and I'll have to make sure this doesn't effect my social life too much. Life is funny.