Become an Effective Software Engineering Manager

How to Categorize Your Activities to Feel Productive

Regardless of how organized you are, various forces act against your personal feeling of happy productivity. As a programmer I could look back at the code that I’d written at the end of the day, point at it, and say “I did that.” I could also point at our ticket tracker and say “I did those tickets.” Even on frustrating days where there was a production issue or something gnarly to debug and fix, we would eventually solve the problem, commit the code, and again I could point at it and say “I did that!”

Several reasons explain why it’s often hard to find this satisfaction as a manager:

• You’re primarily working through other people, so there’s less to feel that you have tangibly done by yourself. ...