Well, I like to think that I am a pretty decent manager of programmers, and that having once been one myself helps! But it is quite a different job, and was an interesting transition, especially since I never went to school for it. I never went to school for *any* of this, so I am honestly surprised that it is something a professor would talk about in a class! What sort of class/professor was this?

(I do actually now read and love blogs about programmer management, though -- primarily Joel Spolsky's and Michael Lopp aka Rands' -- so I suppose it does makes sense that someone out there is teaching this stuff. Not everything about it is intuitive. :) )