I have had a few minutes of break come stressful Friday, and I got the chance to breeze through my tech feeds. I came across an entry about a book. Well, actually its not just a book (that is why I got attracted to it).
For almost two years now, I have been working as a Manager in the IT department of two different companies. Though I still consider myself as a good developer since I love programming, I had to step up to shape myself to be a good (if not the best) manager a developer or an IT person could have in the office. I am a radical person. I always want to try a very weird, untried, and unpractised approach to things that requires much focus and seriousness. At home, I balance the social bonding of my siblings, me and our mom. I also learned much from my teaching career. I still keep the friendship I had with my former students, and from time to time, I still see them at malls, and we still greet each other in delight. I have been managing small groups of techie people since I was in my last year of college and it hasn't been much burden for me. I have always found it challenging and amusing at the same time to be managing people and managing my development skills.
Though I have had experiences in working with people, I also do not fail to hone my programming skills with the latest technologies. I work as a freelance developer for projects that are offered to me aside from my fulltime work (that I most of the time bring at home to finish or improve). I still love to hack codes and experiment on the implementation of "right ways" on how to do stuffs.
But then why does this book appeal to me? ..if I deem myself successful in managing both bits and people?
In truth, I am having a difficulty of separating "the nerd in the cave" with the "socially and intellectually skilled IT manager". Sounds like an easy task, but its not.
Most of the time, I get attracted to picking up tasks that are the most difficult and try to attack it the nerd-in-the-cave way. Ergo, I detach myself from the world and work on my own.. but this is not the ideal way to keep the IT team in tact. By doing this, I fail to see how the other members are working on their assigned tasks. And, to top it all, I miss out some of the managing stuffs since I dwell too much on the programming. I've had these scenarios attack me from afront. I hate it when this happens. Its like you know its going to happen, but you just don't want to avoid it. And, in layman's terms, its just not good.
So, by speculating that RandsInRepose.com has also had a maybe similar experience and that he knows well, what I feel about managing and developing, maybe, this is the right book for me.. and maybe for others too who are in the same position and feel the same way about managing. For all I know, it might teach me more than what I am expecting out of it. I just want this book. 
I hope that this may teach many developers who became managers out there to balance and hone their nerd skills and managing skills at the same time! 