"The shift into management I didn’t see coming"

One of the biggest surprises I had when I became a manager was realising how many roles I was expected to play—without anyone saying it out loud.

Suddenly, I was being asked how a feature might work before there was even a clear problem statement.
I was asked how long it might take, what systems it would affect, and who needed to be involved.

No one called it solution architecture.
No one called it project management.
No one said, “You’re the business analyst now.”

But that’s exactly what it was.

The responsibility landed before I had the language for it. I was still figuring out how to run one-to-ones and build trust with the team—and at the same time, I was now accountable for shaping projects I didn’t yet understand.

There’s no training course for this part.
You learn it by doing it.
And you’re doing it before you know you’re doing it.

Looking back, that’s been one of the most defining shifts in how I think about engineering leadership. It’s not that I stopped being technical—it’s that the technical work moved upstream. And the decisions got fuzzier, faster, and heavier.

I’m curious—did this happen to you too?

Until next time,
Dermot
​The Messy Middle

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