 All right, let's get started so we can get to the closing keynotes and sessions. This is from developer to manager, how to survive, the obligatory introduction as advised by the Drupal Association. My name is Brian Thompson. I'm the director of web engineering at a company called Minecraft Technologies, headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland, just down the street from Fort McHenry on the complete opposite side of the United States. I've been working with web technology since 2006. Most importantly, I'm a developer who now carries a manager title, or I guess I did a good enough job at managing that they actually gave me a director title, so it's like twice the manager ship. You can find me on Twitter, so if afterwards you have questions and you're not sure how to get them to me, you can tweet them at me, or you can find me on Drupal.org, or stop me in the hallway, or find me at trivia night, or anywhere else. I'm a baker, outdoorsman, tech nerd, apparently a manager as well. Let's play out a scenario for everybody. By a show of hands, how many people in the room are developers? We call themselves a developer. Very good, the large majority. How many people by a show of hands are developers in managerial roles? Another good portion, probably 75, 80% or so, wonderful. This talk is both for those people who raised their hands and those who didn't. So I'm glad you're here. So imagine this. Monday morning comes around, you've got your coffee in your Drupal Siberia cup, and you get called into your boss's office, and you're like, oh boy, what's on the docket for this week? And then the Mario music plays, and you get this plus one level up, and you find out that you've been promoted to manager, which is great because all developers are naturally good at managing people if they're good at writing code, right? Or maybe it happens a different way. If you're like me, you don't get called into your boss's office, instead you get called into HR's office on a Monday morning. That's always an exciting way to start. Yeah, really got the blood going. Didn't need coffee that day. And they tell you, oh, we're writing job descriptions for every position. I'm like, great, I'll work with my fellow co-developers, and we'll all come up with a job description. They're like, no, we want you to write a managerial job description. I'm like, why? They're like, because it's yours. I'm like, oh, so that's how I find out I'm promoted. Great. So what do you do? This happens to me, happens to many of you. What do we go about doing? And so as I sit back to sort of boil things down, I always do what I try and do when I'm solving a technical problem. The developer side of me comes out, and I want to start simple. And I want to keep things as simple as I possibly can while keeping things working in my developer mind about how I write code with loops and conditions and triple hooks and services and twig and everything else. And so naturally, as I'm thinking through all of the code that I was about to write that day that I'm not going to, my mind wandered to the vacation I had upcoming where I was planning on going whitewater rafting. As I was thinking about it, I realized that being a manager, being a developer who's been promoted into a managerial position, is just like going whitewater rafting. By a show of hands, how many people have been whitewater rafting before? Probably about 60% or so, 70%? Wonderful. And right now you're all looking at me going, what does paddling a boat down a river as we go up and down have to do with being a manager? That's good. I'll show you. It also gives me an opportunity to find pictures of whitewater rafting and plan my future whitewater rafting trip. So whenever you go whitewater rafting, what's the first thing that they always do with you? Before you even get close to the water, they sit you on this boat one land and they're like, this is how you work the boat. And you're looking at them going, I'm sorry, where's the water? But the most important part of all of that is that they're telling you a few key pieces of information and they're giving you things, namely equipment. So the first step when you're trying to simplify being a manager, previously a developer, is to make sure you use proper equipment. As a developer, we would be using our code editor, maybe PHPStorm or one of the other editors out there, Atom, SublimeText, et cetera. When we go whitewater rafting, we also get the proper equipment. Personal floatation devices. When I was going whitewater rafting the first time, I was like, great, I get a life jacket. They're like, no, it's not a life jacket. I'm like, it's a life jacket, it buckles around me, it keeps me above water. They're like, right, that's a personal floatation device. It's not going to save your life. It's just going to keep your head above water. When you go in a manager position, you have to figure out what your personal floatation device is. In my case, and what I would recommend to many of you, is that it's actually another person. As a manager, you're about to find out a number of different things that you didn't actually know was happening. You're going to be given information that you didn't really care about as a developer, budgets, numbers, managing people, states of projects, how other teams are doing, and all of that's going to come in and try and push you downward. You need a personal floatation device. My recommendation is to find somebody else who you can vent to, and you can offload and let them hold you up. Next piece they give you when you go whitewater rafting is a helmet. That's for your safety. It will try and save your life, most of the time it's successful. As a manager, you need to find your helmet and what's going to protect your head. Maybe that's your favorite pair of headphones. Maybe that's, in my case, Reese's peanut butter Easter eggs, which are luckily in season, but something to sort of keep my head in good shape as I'm going through things and keeping me focused. Last piece of equipment they normally give you individually is a paddle. Sometimes they give you extra paddles because they know you'll lose them. It's happened before. In this case, paddles equate to what you actually use the physical tools as a manager. So task tracking software. I'm not here to tell you that Jira is better than Asana, which is better than Trello, which is better than the other new product out there. But as a manager, you're about to have a ton of information come flowing into you and you're going to have a bunch of requests to actually do something, some of which might be important, some of which might not. Generally, the requests come in faster than you can complete the request, which is unfortunate, but presents good job security for the most part. And so what I recommend is you go out there and you find yourself a piece of task tracking software. What I like to use, what a number of my co-workers like to use is they go out and they set up a Trello board, it's free, and they just put in what they need to do for the course of the week. Starts on Monday, they keep adding things as things come in. By the end of the week, hopefully everything is in the done column or we know what we're rolling into future weeks. Makes it super easy with the mobile app to be able to take and as you receive those requests, Jira works much the same way. You set it up as a Kanban style project. Find yourself some task tracking software that's out there. You'll also find that this helps you keep track of what the rest of your team is doing, because hopefully you're using some sort of task tracking software for software development, keeping track of tickets, be it Jira, Trello, et cetera, et cetera. In addition to having task tracking software is part of your paddle tool. I also put together an escalation playbook and what I recommend to all managers is that you take the time now to sit down and think about what you're going to do when things go sideways, because they will, guaranteed. And if you have written down the process you're going to follow, that you can reference yourself, it's going to be much easier for you to be able to handle that scenario. Emergency happens, people are mad, your brain starts moving a million miles a minute and you forget what your process actually is. You get caught up in the moment. Having this written down, either digitally on your laptop, on a small piece of paper, maybe in your desk drawer, under your keyboard, alongside your passwords, good to know you're all still awake. Other things to keep in mind, figuring out spreadsheets, you will become a master of spreadsheets. Functions and spreadsheets and all the different formula tools will be your friend. Where are you going to store your files? As a manager, you might now be handling new applicants to your company, which means you're receiving resumes. Where do all of them live? Maybe you will review it once. You want to review it again two years from now, because maybe you're looking for somebody to fill that role. Hopefully you can find that document and you've organized it in a way that lets you find it. Mine is a combination of my Mac plus Google Drive plus iCloud Drive plus a USB thumb drive. It's not very organized. It's an area I'm working on, but I know I have a problem. And one area that you often don't think about as a manager, I didn't think about until it came back to me was HR software. You're all looking at me going, Brian, we're developers. That's HR. They're the ones who called you into your office to tell you to write a job description in the first place. What do we want to do with HR software? As a manager, you're going to find yourself doing these wonderful things called performance reviews. You have to track how well people on your team are not doing. Regardless of how you go about doing them and your HR software could be as simple as a Google Drive folder, which is how mine started out, being able to keep track of those sorts of HRE things in the performance reviews that your team is doing or that you're doing for your team. And you can reference them every six months, 12 months, three months, however frequently you're doing those reviews will be beneficial to you. So find proper equipment. Now that we've got our equipment, we can find ourselves out on the river, getting ready. All these people have their paddle in the air. If you go away, what a rafting they tell you don't put your paddle in the air. Luckily, there are photos of people doing it though. So we have this experience. And what those people are doing, and it's not actually great for them besides the guy in the back who has the black paddle sticking out the side of the boat, is going with the flow. Everybody likes to go with the flow. Everybody likes to keep things easy. I don't want to rock the boat, right? To use another phrase. I just want to have everything go along. Well, when you're white water rafting and they tell you don't put your paddles up in the air and you can't go with the flow, you have to either go faster than the water or you have to go slower than the water. If you're going white water rafting and you're going at the same speed as the water, you have a problem because that means the water is now in control. If you're moving faster than the water, you're in control of your boat. If you're moving slower than the water, you're in control of your boat. Same thing applies to managers. As we go along, be it for the people in your team or the clients that you're working with. Either go faster than your projects or people or, more commonly, let your team do what they do best and be great and you go slightly slower. But if you go at the same speed as your teammates and your clients, you're going to let them be in control and as a manager, you need to stay in control, even though it's a team effort as you move along. So keep your paddle in the water, keep using your tools, move faster, move slower than your projects and your teammates. Now, even as we go with the flow, as we're going down this proverbial river here, sometimes you end up looking like this. You'll notice that the water is flowing towards the bottom of the screen. The boat is actually pointed to the left of the screen and everybody has their eyes focused off the left-hand side of the boat, meaning they're about to go into that little rapids there sideways. When you go right, what are rafting for the first time or with people who don't go very often, normally this incites panic and they get super concerned about the fact that they're about to go through this set of rapid sideways and believe they need to hit things head on. They need to go the right direction. As a manager, as you're working on projects and working with your team, being able to go the right direction in a forward direction the way you're looking is great. I don't know about all of you, but oftentimes when I'm managing projects or people, even though we're moving down river, we're not always pointed with the front going directly that way. Backwards is actually quite common. Sometimes we finish projects by going backwards and we get there and it's okay. Most commonly though, sideways is normally how we go through things. Think about the projects you're working on, the teams you're working with. Is everything perfectly smooth? Do you have no problems? If you do, that's great. That means you're going down facing forward, perfectly aligned downriver. Most commonly though, you're probably getting to the end by going slightly sideways or slightly off kilter. And that's okay because when you think about whitewater rafting, when 90 plus percent of the room raised their hand here to say they had been before, the good news is you're all still alive. So even though you went through those rapids potentially sideways or maybe even backwards, you're still here and you made it through it. But always keep your eye on the prize and look in the direction that you want to go. So even if you're going into things a little shaky, sideways, not positioned as well as you want to be, keep looking towards where you want to end up. This picture is about practically underwater. They're going through some big rapids and they're about to experience what in white water rafting I call a bump because they're about to hit that rock. As a manager, you can't be a afraid to bump. Now when you go white water rafting and the rock is coming up, one of the things that they will tell you to do is everybody run towards the rock you're about to hit. Don't go away from it. Go towards it. I've watched people as boats go sideways into a rock, the people on the rock side get scared and they jump to the other side away from the rock and then the rock picks the boat up and flips it upside down. That's not good. So as a manager, when you're facing a problem, lean into it. Get your team tackling it head one right in front of it. Don't run away from it. This lets you bump off and continue down smoothly and be able to sort of stick all your paddles back up in the air again and high five each other with your paddles, which is a very white water rafting thing to do. Don't be afraid to bump. All right. Now as a manager, you're in this white water rafting together. We've got our equipment. We've bumped. We've accepted the fact that in the case of this rapids, we're going to hit it straight one, but we might not always be. You're in the back of the boat. Back of the boat is always the guide. That's you, the manager. You have to give direction. Giving direction is one of the hardest things to do. How many people have been white water rafting before? And even though they were told not to paddle, they still put their paddle in the water. Right. A number of us. It's just second nature because we're panicking that we're not going straight on. So we got to spin ourselves back and as the person at the front of the boat, I of course know what's going on and will position myself as accordingly. But as the manager, you have to be willing to give direction and tell people to take their paddles out. Sometimes when you're managing or guiding a white water rafting boat, only certain people need to paddle. How many people have been white water rafting before where the guide has told only the left side of the boat to paddle. Right. Everybody who who went white rafting has said yes, sometimes we just paddle on the left side. Sometimes we just paddle on the right side. As a manager, you have to understand when to push your people and when to let them rest just a little bit to get yourself going back in the right direction or keep yourself moving faster than the water. So K is a manager to let some people take the easy road and some people take the slightly harder road. If we end up at the best space in the end. Because ultimately we're figuring out when to rest our people so that we can have them with us for the long haul. If we don't do that, then we get into one of my favorite pictures in all of white water rafting, which is on the next slide. It's not this picture down in the bottom. It's this picture. If you're going white water rafting and your feet are up in the air, that's even worse than having your paddles up in the air. It means you're about to get very, very wet. And you're about to evacuate the boat. You'll notice that a paddle sticking up in the air, in defeat sticking up in the air means things have gone drastically wrong. It means you no longer have your paddle, which means you no longer have your tools. These people are probably having fun though once they get back in the boat. So you have to deal with adversity. As a manager, when your boat flips over, things are problematic. They won't always go well. In fact, I can probably count a number of times in my own managerial career where they most definitely did not go well. Times where that code fix that tested fine and staging and test and development and all my local machine and all my developers local machine all looked great. And then I ran it in the production environment and I wiped out a database of 100,000 products. That was it didn't go well. The boat was upside down. I had lost my paddle in my feet were in the air. Luckily, I had my personal flotation device to bring me back up that night. Always make sure you bounce back up. As a manager, you are the one in control. If you bounce back up, everybody else on your team will bounce back up. Now, when you go away at water rafting and you do fall out of the boat, one of the important things that they tell you is to keep your feet pointed in the direction that you're going. You don't go down the river head first, even if you're wearing a helmet. That's kind of dangerous. Try and go feet first. So worst case, you just break a leg as you're dealing with adversity. Always make sure that you keep your feet pointed down river in the direction you want to go. Keep yourself focused in that direction, even if you're not in the comfort of the boat. And also remember that you can't always get back to the comfort of the raft right away. When things go wrong, as managers, we like to fix them as quickly as we can. Somebody comes to me with a problem, they say, Brian, got a problem. OK. What? The license for my sublime text has expired. OK. I'm using Adam in the meantime. Great. Do I need to get you back in the sublime text raft right away? No. On the flip side, there are times where you need to get back in the raft as quickly as you can as you go through those class six rapids. Brian, I have a problem. Yes, I just wiped out the customer's database with 100,000 products. Let's get back in the raft as quickly as we possibly can. But most importantly, as a manager, there's one thing you have to keep in mind, and that's to always have a positive attitude, even when there's water coming over the front of the boat and be that smiling and holding your hands up in the air, the person near the top right, we're sticking your tongue out for a photograph or just smiling, which is normally the best thing you can do as a manager. Your positive attitude will impact all of those around you and cause them to have a positive attitude as well. At this point, I'll open the floor up for questions. There's a microphone that the Drupal Association would like it if you used. Thank you. There are no questions. The Drupal Association also asked me to remind you that tomorrow are the contribution sprints. They are happening on this floor over that way room 602, 606 and 6A. And if you liked my session, please do go rate it online. Tell us what you liked. The Drupal Association, the program committee uses that in subsequent years to help refine the program to put on a better con.