Who is a development manager

Well, I am not a development manager..I am rather a software engineer who has worked with so many so called development managers, that at this point of time, I am seriously confused who a development manager really is. Any ideas? So, in this post, I intend to present to you the picture of different development managers that I got to work with so far. I am really serious about finding out who a development manager is supposed to be, now that I am in a position where as soon as the next promotion happens, I might end up being one myself.

micromanager

The "micro manager" : The first manager that I worked with on starting my career in the IT industry. Really great with those huge excel sheets, pie charts and graphs and what not, equally efficient when it came to dancing on the head of a developer to ensure that the deadlines were met, but equally lousy at gluing the team together, standing by the team in crisis situations and helping the junior folks develop in their career path. I think he had hardly seen any organization than just one, and he was very much molded into the culture of that one organization, happily settled ever after, not much bothering about what was expected out of him from the team.

the hero manager

The "experienced manager"  : This time, I switched my job and the new organization was  a start up, there was just one manager,and the team was also under construction.Looked like the  manager had 

rich experience from some of the top notch software companies and he was here on the mission to start a team and a project from the scratch. He was more senior, better balanced. I was greatly amazed by the balance of his project management and people management skills, there were people in the team who had earlier also worked with him, and they looked up to him like a mentor.He was the best manager so far that I had got a chance to work with.But again, one thing that he lagged was a regular 1:1 with the team members, particularly junior ones like the ones at my level.

The "novice" manager :  As the team in the second organization grew, this guy was promoted from a senior engineer directly to a development manager, although he tried to do full justice to the role as per his capabilities, but we saw a steep decline in the team size as quick as 2 months since he became manager. He was learning and grooming his skills while already on-board. But I really appreciate the way he embraced all feedback from the team and tried to become better day by day. By the time his tenure was over with the organization, even I had got a lot to learn from him.

The "I am always right" manager : Great business insight, unmatched skills when

I can do everything and I am always right manager

it came to creating and maintaining great relation with external stakeholders, even clients. Big time salesman when it came to selling what his team had created. But, and here comes a big but, jack of all trades - one man army who wanted to handle everything from business to product requirement to project plan to design and architecture. Its a pity he didn't get time to code, and then test it out, else, I am sure he would have done that as well. He viewed his team more as a tool to achieve what he wanted. Everyone was supposed to do what was narrated to them. Also, there were no goal settings with the team, no people management. Didn't respect the view of anyone else, used funny logic to always get his ways. The irony is that - this guy had the most innocent outlook covering the most cunning inside!!!

The manager who made me run away: Last but not the least, this was the manager with whom I got to talk when I was about to accept an offer extended from his organization and team. He was so lousy, his body language and personality was so negative, that I changed my almost final decision to join that organization, after meeting him.

At this point of time, I would like to state that the intention of this post is not to offend any of my previous managers in any way or portray the development managers negatively. What I want to say here is that, in a short span of 5 years in the IT industry, I have seen so many colors of development managers that it has left me baffled. There is something fundamentally not in place here.The questions that arise in my mind are - Is it that the ask from the position is too much? Is it that the number of responsibilities that a development manager is supposed to handle are too much for one single individual? Or is it that we have a lot of half baked development managers around - maybe because the expectations from the role vary across organizations and industries? Sadly, I don't have the answers at this point of time, but I am planning to continue my search for the same, and intend to be able to soon come up with a "Development Manager Demystified". :)