I was chatting with my good friend, Chris, recently. He had asked for my advice and help. He wanted to brush up on and add to his programming skills. I recommended a language to consider, a couple of books that have helped me gain a working fluency with it, and a newsletter on the same. We scheduled a time for a video chat where he had many excellent questions from his reading so far. Our chat brought up some unexpected memories that yielded a fresh insight and reminded me of an old one. There are things about being a manager I hadn't realized I missed. Helping my friend approach a professional transition reminded me of some helpful thoughts from my last move from management back to contributor.