Just had lunch with one of Shopee's engineering manager. One of the questions I asked him was, to him what is the biggest difference between being an individual contributor and manager? The most interesting things he shared was:
1) Initially, he found it difficult to delegate tasks especially when he knows he can do it better
2) By delegating, he cannot have full control of the way things are done and the quality of work
3) However, he learned that without delegation, this will create a bottleneck for himself
4) At the beginning, he would go into details of the work done by his team members, but he found that this makes it difficult for them to grow
5) So he learned to instead create a fallback mechanism for when errors or things go wrong. This way, he allows his subordinates to grow while allowing tasks to be delegated/mitigating risks
6) He said initially he learned how to be a manager through his instincts, but later on also relied on books for help.
7) Some new managers have difficulty taking responsibility for the work of others (ie. Subordinates) but he personally has no issues
7) Management is a whole new discipline in itself
