Rands (not sure if that's his real name or not) is one of my favorite internet writers. His website, [Rands in Repose](http://www.randsinrepose.com), is one of my favorites and he posts great stuff [on Twitter](http://twitter.com/rands) as well. His article for today is on moving from an engineering role to a management role and it's one of his best.

Management: Trust So You Can Scale

I’ve thought about moving from a programmer to a manager. I’ve taken on sort of an unwritten team lead role on my current team and I’ve thought in the past about whether or not I’d even want to make that leadership role more permanent. I don’t think I do right now since I’m still focusing on becoming a better programmer but if the chance were presented, I don’t know what I’d do. I don’t think I’d be a good manager at my current company since there’s a lot of HR nonsense and politics that I wouldn’t have the patience for. If being a manager we just a matter of leading a team of professional programmers, that would be awesome. I kind of do the parts of management that I enjoy now, just unofficially. I help my teammates get things done, make sure everybody is happy, help them get books and supplies they need, etc. But dealing with HR is something I wouldn’t enjoy and would probably be bad at. Reading this article is a good, real-world, primer on the issues and I’m glad Rands of all people wrote it since his sensibility seems close to mine, just with more experience.