A sanity-saving starter kit for first-time managers. Built for people who didn’t dream of management but woke up with six direct reports anyway. Think of it as the manual your company should have given you but didn’t, because “trial by fire builds character.”
This section gives you conversational scaffolding, social maps, and templates for earning trust instead of faking confidence. Also includes mindset and identity-shifting tools for navigating the transition from maker to manager.
From “I ship code” to “What do I do all day?”. Welcome to your existential crisis.
Define what you stand for before someone else does it badly on your behalf.
Tools to stop you wandering into politics unarmed in your first 30 days
Because your boss also has no idea what’s going on… help them out.
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Closing Thought
“What I Wish I Knew” is basically a scrapbook of mistakes you’re about to make anyway, but with the comfort of knowing they’re survivable. You will cancel a 1:1. You will avoid a hard conversation for too long. You will feel like you’re failing. That doesn’t make you a bad manager. It makes you a real manager.
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