Early management experience

I had lunch today with a programmer I hired and managed 14 years ago (another excellent LinkedIn outcome). Besides catching up and remembering the rest of the team, I got a view into the type of manager I was 14 years ago, and... I was awful!

Back then I focused on 3 things, technology, technology and technology. There was no "soft side" of management, at that time I thought management was telling people what to do. Luckily, they were a highly talented group of programmers, and as individuals they did some great stuff with the bleeding-edge, latest and greatest technology we were using (I also hadn't yet figured out risk of using new technlogy). But there was no "team", really. People helped each other out, but there was no break-through, what I describe as 1+1=3, when the team creates an outcome that no individual could have even conceived.

In hindsight, it was an opportunity lost, but lesson learned.