From Developer to Manager: it’s not a promotion, it’s a career change.

Helping First Time managers overcome the Dunning-Kruger effect

“The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which relatively unskilled persons suffer illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability to be much higher than it really is”

Abstract: It is known that developers don't necessarily make good managers, yet most companies (us included!) make the mistake of "promoting" the most successful developers into managerial positions. That is flat out wrong.

A developer transitioning to a managerial position might find herself in one of the most difficult positions for a manager: a new team, managing people who until recently were her co-workers. Most tech companies offer very little, if any, training for first-time managers; without the tools, training, or even having a clue as to what their job is, it's no wonder that many first-time managers fail. Yet we as an industry keep putting ourselves in this dangerous position, where failure can have catastrophic effects on the organization as well as the people involved.

In this talk I will discuss some of the mistakes we’ve made at Wix and the system we’re working on to support managers making their first steps including coaching, training and teaching.

Speaker: Shai Kfir

Shai Kfir has been a developer for 20 years and a manager for 5. Shai also serves as a mentor for new managers and co-facilitates a workshop for new managers at Wix called “Management 101”.

Shai runs a blog about about management and leadership, and a facebook page where he shares his insights and inspiring resources from the interwebs.

18:30 Gathering

19:00 Start

See you there!