As a developer gets older and has more experience they are definitely expected to show leadership skills. While this can look different for everybody, usually it looks like some combination of:

1. Ability to mentor others 2. Ability to be the "expert" on the team. A go to developer for design and architecture advice 3. Ability to be the liaison with other development teams, product management, or sometimes upper management

Unfortunately it is rare that you can be an experienced develop er and not be expected to show leadership in these areas, along with your development work.

It doesn’t mean you have to stop coding, or become a people manager, but you do need to start spending a decent amount of time helping the team improve and make good decisions. This does mean less coding, but there can still be a solid amount of coding time.

Like, OP, it sucks that you lost your job, especially during this crazy COVID time. But if you can learn to develop your leadership skills, it’ll be a big help to your career long term. I’d say the biggest thing is to try to keep the needs of the business in mind, and to realize that very often you can make a bigger impact by guiding/mentoring others than you can by just doing it yourself.

Most managers are not leaders. At minimum, they approve expense reports and check the boxes. Better ones know how to operate in an organization and detect & solve operational problems.

Leaders take a position and make their case and defend it effectively. They grow and support the people around them. And they try to improve themselves along the way by learning from the people above, below, and parallel to them. They have the trust of people around them because they earned it and reflect it.

You can be none of the above, one of the above, or - and this is special - both of the above.

And of course, none of that is static. People can improve and grow at any time.

developer longest on project by a significant factor is likely to be the leader by default.

developer likely to be on project longer than more experienced developers may be deferred to as leader (at least I often do if I am consulting for a short period and a less experienced guy from the company is on the project for the next year I defer to how he wants to do things)

Often leadership is just going to the most experienced because of course they know how to make their case and defend it.

You're arguing 2 very different concepts with the GP, he made the case (quite elegantly) that a leader is a set of behaviors and you're ignoring all of that and stating "nope, it's a job title".

I'd recommend you re-read their comment.

As regards rereading comments I suggest you reread mine with the consideration that the phrases "leader by default" or "deferred to as leader" would indicate someone who is not leader by title, yet has also not necessarily demonstrated a lot of leadership qualities to get the position (as indicated by the rest of the comment).

They are leaders not by title or nature, but leaders by necessity and pragmatism.

Maybe leader by "position" or "circumstance" is a better term as it covers the situations like "most experienced in a team" even if that experience is only a few months more than the person they're helping and even if they don't have the title to match.

I still agree with the parent commenter that distinguished between _true_ leaders and those who've been placed or defaulted into the role.

If they are unable to evaluate your actual work, the only way they can evaluate you is based on your verbal contributions during a meeting.

As they are clearly unable to coach you, they are probably relying on you to coach the younger workers.

Just realize that each manager is looking for a different set of things. Some managers would be perfectly happy with you quietly writing applications well.

Nobody knows how to be a manager, and while some with encouragement can learn, some people either don't have the inclination or correct temperament.

I personally would never push someone into management or push the person out if that person was happiest as a individual contributor.

The world needs more makers, not more managers.

All the best!

It makes me wonder if the OP got their lines crossed about the lack of leadership thing being a significant part of the reason they got fired and/or there's a significant part of the story not being told here, like maybe the company is being pummeled by the effects of the pandemic and had to trim some of their more expensive employees (of which someone with 15 years of experience is likely to be) or something.

And let's be honest, lots of people with 15 years experience really have 1 year of experience 15 times. It's really hard to guess at the situation based on no evidence, but I can easily see both sides here.

People relationships are difficult. Then there is the "game" to play as part being part of a company (once you are at the manager/director/vp level, you have to understand that you represent the company to your peers. I have something very interesting happen to me, one week I was a developer, peer of my colleagues, we joked a lot and had a lot of fun interactions at work. Next week I become "director of Engineering", become their boss, and the interaction changed completely (it was not something I did, it literally changed from one day to another).

Now, on the current state of things, I would not search a lot to what the company told you, regarding why they let you go. At a previous startup I was, at some point we had to make cuts, and all the VPs and C levels sat down in a meeting looking at each of our teams, and then each team had to decide to cut 2 people. It was ruthless, and every manager had to explain to the person why they were let go...

The best thing would be, if you had a more friendly relation with your manager, that now, after the fact, you can have a informal call with him and ask him, what do you think you could have done better in general to avoid being affected by the layoffs in your company.

Having said that, you do need to realize that the "glass ceiling" on developer positions tends to be lower than on management (aka. "leadership") positions. There often is lip service saying the "technical ladder" is parallel and equal to the "management ladder", but it isn't in my experience. Fact of life.

Consequently, if you prefer solving technical problems rather than people problems, you will be trading off money for happiness.[1] In my book, that is a trade-off I'm happy to make. In fact, I've deliberately chosen to stay in the technical realm rather than "leadership" realm for 35 years now. Especially early on in my carrier, my managers pushed me towards "leadership" roles and I let them know I was not interested. While I have and will take on a leadership role out of necessity due to circumstances in a project, I've always made a point of reverting to the technical work when the crisis is over.

I have less money but more happiness. That doesn't work for everyone, but it works for me. Sounds like it would work for you.

[1] There are people that enjoy being in a leadership position. "Rands in Repose" https://randsinrepose.com/archives/managing-nerds/ is a good example of that. I'm happy for him and I'm happy for my managers who enjoy being in a leadership position because that means I can focus and satiate my inner nerd.

I was laid off at the end of February. To make a long story short, the product wasn't selling well and the company had to cut costs.

In my case, my manager gave me a heads up months in advance. If you're still in touch with your manager or people you worked with, try to find out the real story.

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Think about some of the excellent experienced people you learned from early in your career. You now need to be just like them.

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Career-wise, what kind of "leadership" is expected from someone with 15+ years experience? A lead does the most important designs, sets the technical direction, mentors other developers, takes part in bug triages, works on the most difficult parts of a product, and interviews candidates. Sometimes the title of "architect" is used.

You can also be a manager, or a consultant who can get in and get things done.

But, someone with 15+ years of experience isn't just a coder getting a bigger paycheck than someone with 3 years of experience. Your career lessons need to rub off on the younger developers. Otherwise, your large paycheck just turns into a giant target compared to your cheaper peers.

That never happened to me before. I have never once fired, laid-off, or furloughed. And I don't know how to cope with this. The market has gotten very tight since the beginning of the crisis. Usually, my email would explode within hours whenever I make myself available for hire. Now I'm into the third day of my unemployment and still have no prospects, no interviews, no offers.

Just a couple of weeks ago, I was tweeting about how concerned I was about seeing so many developers losing their jobs. I was hoping we'd figure out something, maybe a way to help them. Now I'm looking for a job myself.

Fuck this virus. And fuck those politicians who didn't take it seriously. And fuck those people who still support them.

I've been in your shoes multiple times. It sucks, and it's easy to blame yourself (or relatedly, for others - like here in this very thread - to encourage you to blame yourself). Don't fall into that trap. It won't help.

The only productive thing to do is to take things one step at a time.

1. Apply for unemployment if you haven't already. It won't be anywhere near what you were getting before, but it's better than nothing, and with a layoff it should be an open-and-shut case for approval (especially in places like California that almost always err on the side of the former employee).

2. Just because you don't have an employer doesn't mean you don't have a job. Your unemployment benefits are contingent on you documenting that you've applied for some number of jobs, which you're hopefully already doing, so keep doing that.

3. Just because you don't have an employer doesn't mean you don't have a job. Open-source contributions, side projects, whatever you can do to further demonstrate your value to prospective future employers (and - preferably - make the world a better place in the process) - now's the time to start cranking on those.

4. Obviously, you'll want to trim expenses as much as possible. The lower your costs, the longer your runway.

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In terms of finding that next job, it's gonna be a brutal affair. It took me months, and I ended up compromising and moving down on my career ladder for a bit. You might have better luck, especially if you were previously getting offers regularly, but I'd say 3 days is a bit too soon to be too disheartened.

It seems like your best bet right now is going to be in the medical world (e.g. hospital IT), and in fact that's exactly where I'd be applying right now should my own job go under. As a bonus, if you really do want to "fuck the virus", I can't think of a better way to put your technical skills to use.

> Open-source contributions, side projects, whatever you can do to further demonstrate your value to prospective future employers

That's what I was talking about. Why can't we all as a community figure out some platform where we can help those developers who [temporarily] lost their jobs? We all use lots of open-source tools without paying a dime. Wouldn't it be great to have a platform where they can still contribute to open-source projects during a transitional period? Platforms like Patreon and Github Sponsors are aimed to help authors, but not contributors.

That was the whole point of my comment. I wasn't asking for an advice and certainly wasn't ready for people telling me how incredibly lucky I am.

Indeed it would. Things like Patreon are still usable even if you're "just" a contributor, but it'd be nice if there was one of these patron platforms that better showcased open-source contributions. GitHub Sponsors is a step in the right direction, but there's still a waitlist to be eligible for sponsorships after, what, a year?

Of course, in all likelihood, if jobs are drying up then so will such sponsorships, be it on existing platforms or entirely new ones.

It's ok to feel down for some time, but it's important to understand the broad picture and not take this personally - regardless of what you were told.

Now, regarding leadership resources, I would recommend to start with the following (in this order):

Moneyball (movie), books: The Goal, The Phoenix Project, The Mythical Man-Month, The Hard Thing About Hard Things, The Culture Code and in-between those - various Simon Sinek videos.

If you read this far, you should be able to continue finding materials on your own from here ;)

Best of luck!

Take a breath, everyone is getting laid off. Don't blame yourself, that's a road to hell you don't want to go down right now.

It isn't a bad time to reflect and improve yourself but I wouldn't take it personally.

From your OP, I'd say...

- grow a much thicker skin

- form and share your opinion more often

- actively seek out other leaders at your level or above to see how you can improve _something_ (this is often just watercooler/gossip for leaders/managers but it is part of the game)

- take a more active part in guiding the team processes

If you really just feel comfortable as a developer then just guide the development process - help create/iterate on/enforce style guides and other development pieces. You can do this with very little people leadership skills but still have a visible impact on an organization.

I know that leadership can be taught, but I don't think it can be taught while you're not already in a leadership position, or at least a simulation of it, i.e., hands-on classes. Olivia Fox Cabane has a some YouTube videos on Charisma that I think would be good to watch. She's a damn good communicator.

Take responsibility for the actions of the people you lead, do the things you want them to do. Your actions will speak far louder than the words you say: lead by example and all that.

Similarly, in both cases it took me a few months to find a new job. Reading HN you can get the impression that there’s something wrong with you because it seems like a software engineer shouldn’t be able to even cross the street without being offered a job. I think that really depends on where you live and how much of a network you’ve built. That can be difficult if you’re the introverted type.

We all have some work to achieve that kind of stature, but from your question I also sense the people you reported to were not a good fit for what I perceive to be your likely leadership style. Don't take it personally, they dont have all the answers.

I don't know you enough to tell you what you need to do, but if you have 15 years of experience: you probably have useful things to share with the less experienced. Most people want to learn, they want mentors, so if that isn't happening maybe a tiny bit of reflection on how to be more welcoming. But man, it's a layoff, don't kick yourself over it.

> In retrospect, higher ups did mention in passing about an year ago about how I need to speak up in meetings etc.

That's a critical point. If you have 15 years experience, even if you don't have a "leadership" title, you are expected to demonstrate some leadership in meetings.

First: In the meeting, you should be able to discuss tradeoffs, explain why certain things are easier, safer, or more dangerous. You should be able to give context and have an opinion. Your opinions need to be fair and unbiased, or you should be able to point out that you're biased towards a particular approach. You're in the meeting for your experience, both career experience, and (if you've been in the job for awhile,) experience with the product(s).

Second, and this is more critical, but harder to do: You need to be able to stop bad meetings. In some cases, this is a matter of just telling someone that their 20 person invite list is too long. In other cases, you need to interrupt people and force them to make their point or move on; or you need to interrupt a meeting to politely excuse half of the people in the room who don't need to be there.

Yes, it's technically management's job to stop bad meetings, but it's also your job too. Stopping bad meetings is everybody's job, but it falls on the most experienced people on a team to lead by setting an example.

Maybe in a perfect world, but this is heavily context-dependent. Ignore office culture/politics at your own risk.

But I've found that at times it's better to work within the system a little bit like. IMing my boss if we're in the meeting to check with him first.

Stopping a meeting seems like a massive waste of resources, especially when you've already gathered the folks that can fix it.

Stopping a meeting in the middle of the planned duration is a bit dramatic, but if it’s clear after 15 minutes the group collectively doesn’t have the information needed to make a decision, its worth stopping.

I’m currently spending a quarter of my day or more in status meetings of various types. I will absolutely tell people I’m dropping (which is a the “lite” version of stopping a meeting) if they stop providing value.

> when you've already gathered the folks that can fix it.

Far too many people gather the wrong people, and stopping to excuse people is critical.

This is a really bad advice, especially in this context. Don't annoy or confront your coworkers. Tell your manager if you feel like stopping some meetings. It's strictly their job, and they will be happy to step in and do that. Besides, any meeting of 20 people should have a manager present.

In my experience, the way to handle this is usually a quick Slack conversation with the meeting organizer starting with "hey, I saw you invited all of team X to the meeting - do they all need to be there or just Y". The response is almost always "I don't know anyone on that team so I just invited them all", and by initiating the conversation you are offering to help.

There will be a discussion that starts meandering, going down rabbit holes, and somehow he'll find the perfect question to ask, which is always a very simple one, to set everyone back on target. Sometimes I don't think people even realize this is happening.

The reason it's hard to explain is because it comes across as an innate character trait, a skill that's just core to his personality, which is why it's so hard to emulate.

That’s it. But being proactive and doing the right thing is often painful and difficult, so people avoid it.

We typically think of leaders as people being at the top of an organizational hierarchy, but everyone in an organization can be a leader according to this definition. Leadership doesn't arise from assuming a role, it arises from using one's role to further the objectives of the organization.

You don’t need books and instructions on how to be a leader. You just need to step up to the plate and have the courage to be one.

Yet if you build upon your team and create mutual trust, people will follow you and work really hard. That's the rewarding part of the job.

Regarding higher-ups, you have to choose wisely, most of the time it's very difficult because you give them what they want, but it costs a lot of time, energy and money.

Be pedagogic, explain, and explain. The most difficult part is when you want to take action that doesn't give reward instantly (CI/refactoring/...). Until they've been bitten by this, they won't understand. But you won't know beforehand, so ask the question in interviews !

Promote your best teammates eagerly and give them responsibilities.

Share as much information as possible with the team.

Enforce collective decision processes based on technical merit and cost (RFC-style), to rally everyone to the chosen solution.

Some people can be good leaders and speak up in meetings where they are talking about an area they are comfortable in. For example, a senior or lead engineer does an excellent job speaking up and leading in an engineering meeting - but in a room with a bunch of business people they don't really have anything to add so they don't say anything.

I only ask this because it's important to remember context. Sometimes people are in expected to be leaders in a situation that does not fit them. In other situations they can do well. Just something to keep in mind.

As for the layoffs...don't take it personally. If you were a good developer and your management was too short-sighted to realize you might fit better in a different role, that's not your fault.

Why would you be down on yourself? Many many developers at many companies are being laid as many companies are folding and many others are hanging on by their nails. This is the current economy.

I have retained my job only, and I cannot stress this strongly enough, because I am lucky enough to work in an essential industry (banking). That's it. I don't know you, but I would place a hard bet that it has nothing to do with competence, capability, or performance.

> I think I don't know how to be a leader at a workplace.

I figured it out when it was dropped in my lap. My first time to really really own a large team as both a people and business leader was about 5 years ago. I was just some dumb army guy, but withing a short time frame the leaders around me moved on leaving me with 29 people to manage. I was told I did well and received letters of recommendation to pad my warrant office packet. The opportunity just dropped in my lap and I just performed as well as I could.

My actual first time in management, this was military as well and was also not of my choosing, I was 24 years old and I only had two people working directly beneath me, but I had two business units that provided oversight for. In that role I mostly just ran operations. I was the managing technician in charge of operations for the 335th Theater Signal Command and ran all ops for all void and data communications in Iraq, Kuwait, and Afghanistan during the 2004 surge.

I have never made it into management in the corporate world. Perhaps I am just waiting for it drop on me, which likely won't ever happen. The morale of my story is that you don't really know what kind of leader you will be until you are leading. The most important thing I learned about it is that if you take care of your people and ensure the mission always comes before you the people you manage will try harder to make you a success.

DM me. If I can do it, anybody can (I definitely still have a long way to go though but happy to share learnings and surprises).

We do not live in a meritocracy. For better or for worse, your "job performance" does not have a one-to-one relationship with how well you perform at your job.

Your "job performance" is based on how you are perceived by those reviewing you. If you have a disconnect between your work and how you are perceived, you probably need to improve how you market and present yourself. Consider this as just another part of investing in yourself.

Translating back into developer-centric jargon: the best technical solution isn't automatically the best. You need good marketing and product-market fit.

My solution took a few things. First, like you, I was part of a layoff. I eventually came to realize that the company culture was a big part of it, as I really didn't have that issue at previous employers (although I wasn't in, or expect to be in, a leadership position at that point in my career).

Secondly, I had to shake off imposter syndrome. Part of the feeling was that I was constantly working with newer technologies, and therefore always felt like a beginner. So I took a step back, and went for a position that was purely Linux based. Then, I approached the position as if I was a consultant who's job was to go in, identify trouble spots, and provide solutions. Getting into that mindset helped immensely, and combined with shaking the impostor syndrome feeling, allowed me to nail the interview.

Finally the last part was taking ownership over several key areas, things that I identified as having lacking skills in the organization that I could fill in for. This involved lots of cross training -- initially one on one, then building up to group training sessions (effectively meeting where I was the leader). That, combined with working with other key individuals in the organization helped me to understand what problems they needed solving, and from there delivering on those solutions (and not just writing code -- but starting off with the base documentation, such as functional requirements documents, system design documents, risk assessments, making pretty infographs, elevator pitches, the works).

Oh, and being the go to resource when other team members run into issues helped to build up a reputation that brings with it respect from various levels of the company.

Here's an idea -- many C-suite execs have customers that they handle personally -- these are long term customers that the particular exec handled from early on in the company. Find one, that has a nagging problem that you can solve. Make them happy, they tell the C-suite about how pleased they were to work with you, and you have a high level person that will go to bat for you in the future. Just make sure that you never screw up that customer.

So a few thoughts:

1. Were you the only one laid-off or was a portion of the org?

2. 3.3 million people in the US filed for first time unemployment last week, and it'll surely be similar this week.

A couple of weeks ago I got asked "what if we need to cut engineering staff?" And we ran the numbers. Of course the first thing I did was push back, we won't be able to hire them back, it's an amazing team of dedicated engineers, if the bad times are 4 weeks this will gut our skill set, at this level what managers are left, do we need any? Certainly don't need me. Thankfully we found a way through without cutting engineering staff.

It's pretty dreadful on the engineering management side, though not as devastating. I never want to let any of my team go, but I can't be a petulant child either. :(

How we pick people...sometimes it's seniority, or experience with the product/team/etc. Sometimes you just have to reduce to meet burn rates.

I don't want to recommend any 1 leadership book. But leadership comes in big L and small l versions. Technical leadership is important, and something I would expect out of any team member with 15 years experience. Much of the literature focuses on how to be a big L people leader, but if you want to stay technical ferret through all the books and find a book focused on how to be a technical leader/architect/etc.

To OP, layoffs are very common now and know that more will come soon because of COVID, it’s not within your control and doesn’t make you a bad developer, companies need to make cuts at times like this to keep afloat, you don’t need to blame yourself.

Take a deep breath, it may take more than a week to recover and don’t be hard on yourself. I’d find it hard to believe that you’ve truly overcame all the stages of grief in just a week, when I was laid off the first week I was still going through denial, and was trying to find a new job ASAP to prove myself. By the look of your post chances are you’re still in denial too. You have 15 years of exp under your belt, give it time to think about where you’d like to go and what you’d like to be doing in your next role, it will come to you sooner or later.

I think this needs to be resolved across industry. The so-called "leadership" should learn that not all fingers are equal but every finger has use and value. Similary not every employee can be a leader and extrovert. It is the leadership's responsibility to identify and make use of "silent souls" on a team to greater effect. In my career I have seen people who are introverts to be very capable when given a right environment; in fact they exceed others on the team. Forcing people to be what they are not is not a good leadership practice.

1. High Output Management, Andy Grove - Explains management from first principles in a very engineering mindset. You'll understand the value of meetings, one-on-one's and so on.

2. Mastering the Rockefeller Habits, Verne Harnish - Explains the structure of a business, and the priorities and trade-offs of rapid growth. A bit more holistic and pragmatic than #1, and assumes you're stepping up into new roles and responsibilities relatively frequently

3. Critical Conversations, Grenny/Switzler - Talks about the need for (and differences between) discussion/conflict/control/coordination in communication in an org. Reading this should help you recognise when and how to speak up.

These are more management than leadership, but I found that a strong basis in management made it easier for me to step into leadership when necessary - I knew the why/what/how of the technical and organisational sides of the matter, and built trust and respect on that competence/understanding.

Ping me by DM if you want more customised recommendations - There's books like Pat Lencioni's '7 dysfunctions of a team' which are excellent for helping you recognise and address the most obvious flaws in a team, and it's a great starting point for becoming a good leader.

I'd also recommend things like therapy or the Landmark Forum as a way of working through your feelings about leadership and the way you relate to people. Leading people will bring out a bunch of positive and negative stereotypes in you and the people around you, and I don't think there's a better way than doing the emotional labour of recognising and working through those issues - you start getting into territoriality and survival-mode mechanisms when you are in charge of teams, and so much of it is kept below conscious awareness because the emotions involved tend to be overwhelming and imprinted at a very young age.

What I think is required though is the ability to handle gracefully unmotivated or deceptive people, blatant liars, tired ones or those who have personal problems. At the other end of the spectrum, you have to keep a relevant distance from those you may admire, or even be attracted to.

As for planning, you will have to handle a number of events that are out of your control but still affect your project.

Personally I can do none of these. I am way too sensitive. And I still am a developer. I think there is easily work for 20 years as a developer, but then a number of specialties will face increased automation.

There are options though. If you're happy just being a coder, you'll probably have to accept all of the above and a not high paycheck to boot. You get job satisfaction, and maybe the right place won't have an axe hanging over your head.

Getting into other roles, will require you to focus elsewhere. If your job is coding, you need to stop coding for a while. Find out how you can get others to do your work, coach them, while also working to elevate the tech stack, take risks that pays off, test new stuff. This requires to go beyond regular paycheck, study stuff all the time etc. You might become Tech Lead, but only if you become useful to others across the board. Not about you anymore, but best not to stop coding to keep fresh.

Architect? That could be a next step, chill.

I'm sorry to say that there are not so many realistic career paths on the dev track, but switching to IT, brings lots of opportunity - both as generalist or as specialist with higher pay. You will learn to stand on your own feet in BS. It'll be hard to impossible to keep current coding wise. Though, there are much more opportunity to rise to be a natural leader than to be an introvert dev staring into monitor all day.

Too bad this is all there is in current systemic conditions. Probably no leader is vested in you, interested or knowledgeable / connected enough to mentor you to put you on the right track. Lots is either natural knack and/or pure dumb luck. What always helps is knowing the right people and working hard to expand skills and value to others. Same as with being born by the right parents, being taught by a true teacher or working for a wise natural leader.

It sounds like at the very least your boss doesn't know how to be a leader in the workplace either: if you have a shortcoming which is impacting the way you are perceived by your leadership team, or your job performance, then it is incumbent on leadership to:

1/ Help you understand the deficiency and determine whether it's real, or optical (for example: "I see John coming in late all the time! That guy is really lazy!" vs. "Wow, John comes in late and leaves early but he's SO productive when he's here!")

2/ Provide you with clear practical steps you can take to improve, and what the impact of you improving will be (on you, on the business)

3/ A clear expectation on what the consequences will be if you do not improve (is it just "you're gonna be a midweight forever dude", or "the skills you lack are vital for this job").

Most people have a cap on where their natural intuition and instinct can take them as leaders. Going beyond that requires coaching, mentoring, and training. If you were hired into a leadership role but can't lead, then it's a deficiency of their hiring process. If you were hired as an individual contributor (IC) and are being expected to lead, then you need coaching.

Do not accept the part of your brain which is telling you that this is on you. If you were fired because you can't lead then that's terrible leadership in and of itself.

Find somewhere with a strong engineering culture and great leadership. Be open that you are worried about being stuck in Individual Contributor land forever and that as part of your development, you want to receive coaching from a leader who can help you adopt a leadership mindset. Make it clear this is not about promotions, titles, or pay grades: you want to understand leadership and have regular conversations with someone who is leading.

You do not need to be humbled.

Since everyone was working at home there were no goodbyes or good luck. I had people on my team I realized I didn’t even have their cell phone number to check in on them.

Feel for you. Don’t beat yourself up. Find best thing you can and work to prep yourself for the next thing.

1. Speak up. Not everyone understands the problem like you do.

2. When you speak, start from the reason why something needs to be done. People reason better forwards, from the "why" to the "what". Don't go straight to the "what" unless you are 100% sure everyone is already on the same page.

3. Be prepared to learn from different types of people. The people who are good orators.

We all wish you best of luck.

Secondly, I once asked your question and a friend answered that most managers land their position by necessity for the company. They were here when the team grew. Or created their company, so they had to manage it. Most managers just deal with what is happening. Most people don’t know what they are doing, or why they have been selected. Sometimes there is no rationale. So don’t sweat it too much, because being relaxed and easy to manage plays a good part in career success.

For me it was much easier to be a manager than be an employee, because as an employee you are expected to compete and establish your presence (such as speaking up in meetings); As a manager you have entirely different incentives, it was way more intuitive for me.

> Studies suggest that more than 70% of people experience the impostor syndrome at some point in their career.

You can use writing (email) to guide your team instead of speaking to help you act rationally instead of emotionally since you are already aware that he (or anyone else) is technically less qualified.

I have over 20 years of experience too, and was a bit like you when I was younger. Then I noticed that 99% (I might be boasting here, but the exact percentage does not matter) of my colleagues have no idea of what they are doing, even though they make themselves look otherwise.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome

If you're interested in a leadership role but just don't know how to go about it, you need to decide what kind of leadership role are you interested in. The technical aspects of the project? Leading a team? Moving into management? Something else? (people on the business side will almost always try to guide you to managing people since that's usually the most commonly accepted/rewarded career track... but it's not for everyone) Once you know that, then you can go about developing the needed skills.

Reality testing is critical. Ask them out to lunch or coffee and frame it as seeking their thoughts as a means to improvement, not bitterness about the divorce.

There are a few comments in this thread agreeing with your self-assessment that a person with your experience should have leadership capability. You probably should. That said, you don't know that is why you were let go. It may just be why you hadn't been promoted. A few of the places I have worked have been happy to let people hang out as senior engineers indefinitely.

If I were you, I would reach out to your former managers and coworkers to see if they have any feedback they can give you. You would be especially well served by reaching out to a manager at a company that _didn't_ let you go. Do you have a boss you are still in contact with from a job you left voluntarily?

also, getting laid off and getting fired are different, lay offs are usually a financial thing, it's not about your skills, you weren't in the wrong, they're trying to minimize how much they spend (including how much they pay employees) so you could probably get a recommendation from your former employer

stay strong

Before you start down this road, I'd ask yourself if you want to be a manager. You can lead, based on your experience, but that doesn't mean you need to have people reporting directly to you. I was a manager in an IT group, and while everyone liked me (I'm a likable guy!) I wasn't particularly good at the managing part. It made me miserable to not be good at my job and I'm much happier consulting/contracting now.

Some people take offense when others seem to be "encroaching" on their territory.

When looking at a problem and a room of people trying to address that problem draw the line between the ROOM and the PROBLEM. A lot of times the way people speak about or address things is by first drawing a line between the people in the room, and then draw another line between the room and the problem.

I beleive it is a better idea to get strait feedback from your manager about actual cause of your discharge. Maybe you are just plain wrong about it.

This is a time of troubles. People of all personality types are getting laid off.

Also, if you need practice with interview questions, I liked Elements of Programming Interviews in Python: The Insiders' Guide.

Leader != "I need to speak up in meetings"

The problem here might be more general, not communicating enough. You might be technically competent but there's a problem when the level of communication isn't high enough. Countless problems (an unnecessary development) can be avoided through high bandwidth communication. Even when it might be unjustified, if people feel like people aren't communicating, then they wonder if perhaps problems are getting created that could be avoided simply because that person isn't speaking up. It leads to frustration. This may not be applicable to your situation, but I thought I'd throw that out there

Humility is something many never get an opportunity to learn. But at the end of the day humility does not pay the bills.

Read or listen to Enders Game, by Orson Card.

Oddly enough I have an education in emergency medicine and can't seem to find work...