On manager I had once told me, you don't want to be a manager. You can't sleep at night thinking about all the things that are not going the right way. Another manager I said told me, being at the top isn't easy. On your level, you just need to look left and right. When you are higher up, you need to look left and right , up and down, and sideways.

There's a proposal to make me the manager of three engineers. In my current capacity, I've been helping explain our system in various levels of difficulty to them. Their manager had bailed out for a better opportunity last month. There is only 1 person on the team that has been in her position for a while. She keeps the thing running. There is a new internal transfer from another department. She's eager to learn but is still starting out. The highest paid member of the team has been with the company for 6 months. He's made it clear that he would rather be in a business role than where he landed in a technical role in our business intelligence group.

The group is already depleted put the negative attitude this guy spews is poisonous. He's very capable of solving problems as I've seen in the past. However, he's been given a role in the problem ticket group. He's relying way too much on outside resources and not doing enough of his own analysis. He wants to be spoonfed.

Part of me wants to say, "You're the highest paid member of your team, start acting like it, show some leadership." I'm upset just thinking about it. If I were manager, I would have a hard time sleeping knowing that this guy was just using his position as a stepping stool to get somewhere else. No matter what his past experience was, he still needs to pay some dues here and show some leadership. Why would any other group take him with the negative feedback from our group. Maybe he's better off leaving. I hate to say it because our group needs more bodies not less. Sometimes addition by subtraction really is the way to go.

The problem with being a manager and making that decision is that now, you have one less employee to do the mountain of work and you have to prove that things will be better without him until you can hire someone else. How scarce is the IT pool? How soon do you anticipate finding someone? Will you need to pay them more? Also, this guy had a lot of business skill. It didn't look like in the current state, that the position called for it.

Anyway, I think the answer to the question is, managers sleep well at night when they have their shit under control. What I see I'd be jumping into is a situation ready to implode. I've been trying real hard to turn things around, be positive, show people how to go about analyzing problems....give them hints but don't do the work for them. Another person on the team is young and shows plenty of initiative to do things on his own. For others, It may not be enough to spoonfeed them. Just thinking about moving into management and I had trouble sleeping last night :(.