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Engineer to Staff: The Two Key Challenges Engineers Face

When I used to evaluate staff+ promotions, I noticed two patterns preventing engineers from getting promoted.

🕵️👀❌ First, engineer was not visible to the leadership.

You need to be visible to the leadership to get promoted to staff.

To become visible you need to work on what matters. It is always a question of impact but impact in “leadership’s eyes”

To be able to work on what matters, you need to be on the right team so that you get to those opportunities.

Just being on the right team is not enough. You need a supportive manager who is interested in growing you, a manager who believes in your abilities.

Choosing the right team and right manager impacts your career growth story a lot more than you think. 

👤➡️👤 Second, frequent manager change.

There were cases where engineers believed that they did impactful work but by the time promotion evaluations came, their manager changed. 

The new manager didn’t have full context and conviction to put forth the case and it gets rejected.

Many times this is not in your control. Re-orgs happen. 

But doing your best to find a stable team led by the manager who is thriving in their role is important.

Setting New Managers Up for Success: The Crucial Role of Training and Support

When a new manager fails, in many cases, it’s a failure for their manager.

Because they didn’t care to support the new manager with hard things.

I have worked at companies that take new manager training very seriously.

I have also worked at companies that don’t care much about training new managers.

They pick their excellent individual contributors with somewhat good soft skills and make them managers.

They toss them into the deep end with little to no guidance and the new manager fails!

Most of the management skills can be learned on the job but certain areas need explicit guidance.

Here are a few examples:

✅ Writing quality performance reviews
✅ Performance management cases that turn into PIP
✅ Letting somebody go
✅ Sensitive compensation discussions
✅ Executive communication

I have seen firsthand the quality of managers at companies with formal training programs. It’s a day and night difference.

The most important thing to remember is –

When a manager doesn’t perform, the entire team suffers.

When a manager doesn’t perform it’s a failure for their manager too.

I am curious to hear about your experience with manager training. Have you found them helpful?

Unlocking IC Career Growth Through Management Experience

Even when committed to an IC career path, if staff+ engineers try out management once, it can accelerate their IC career. 💡

It is easy to say, I know what managers do and I am not interested.

But there is a big difference between observing managers vs actually doing that role first hand.

There are so many skills you’ll be forced to learn that will be valuable as a senior technical leader too.

The most important one is empathy.💞

But here are some more that come to mind:

→ How to get work done through others 🤝
→ Emotional intelligence 👥
→ Collaboration on a deeper level 🌐
→ Inclusive decision-making. 🌈
→ Growing people as a primary responsibility 🌱
→ Hiring decisions and headcount planning 🔮

And countless other skills becoming increasingly important as you approach senior leadership roles in tech. 🚀

For instance, you’ll be in a better position to navigate large technical projects, partner with engineering managers or understand team dynamics. 👨‍💻👩‍💻

Think of it as adding another dimension to your technical chops. 🛠️

I’ll highly recommend reading the popular blog article (link in the comments) – “The Engineer/Manager Pendulum” by Charity Majors that echoes this sentiment. 😇

I am interested to hear your thoughts or experiences around this 😊🗨️

Common Failure Patterns Among New Tech Leads in Product Engineering Teams

I have seen these three failure patterns with new tech leads in product engineering teams.

1️⃣ Great technical chops but lack of effective delegation skills

These tech leads excel at breaking down projects and assigning work to their team members, but they struggle to follow up. They can’t keep tabs on their team’s progress, and the project slips.

It’s not intentional – In most of the cases, they feel they don’t have an authority to ask hard questions to their team members.

But managers hold them accountable for project delivery, and projects keeps delaying. This is a very frustrating experience for managers.

2️⃣ Keeping technically complex tasks to themselves

Another pattern is when tech leads keep the technically complex pieces to themselves and delegate the easier tasks to others.

While this may help with project execution, they miss out on mentorship opportunity. Opportunity to grow and up level the junior talent.

3️⃣ Inability to collaborate with non-engineering partners

Tech leads need to collaborate independently with product managers and other cross-functional partners. However, many can’t do it without their manager’s help.

Their mindset is often focused on “just tell me the requirements and I’ll build it for you.”

Yet, in staff+ roles, you are expected to take ownership and proactively work with non-engineering partners to free up your manager for bigger responsibilities.

💬 These patterns are just based on my own observations and experience. What else have you seen? Share in the comments if you have come across other failure patterns.

Transitioning to Management: What You Need to Know

Many staff+ engineers get an opportunity to become a manager, and many accept it thinking it’s a some kind of step up.

But here’s the truth: It’s not always what they thought it would be. It is not a promotion. It is a brand new role. You need to learn the new skills from scratch.

Here are some things to keep in mind while you are making this decision:

😣 You are transitioning from an excellent engineer to a mediocre manager

0️⃣ You are starting from zero and you need to learn most of the skills on the job

📚 Your most valuable lessons in management will come from trying and failing at things

🦸‍♀️ Learning to let go off “let me just dive in and fix it myself because I can do that a lot faster”

🤷 Understanding that you are no longer the smartest technical person in the room

🧏 Learning how to listen more and talk less

🤐 Learning how to observe quiet people and including them in the discussion

❓ Learning how to guide the conversation with questions rather than directive comments

🗣 Sharing your opinions at the end after everybody on your team had a chance to share their thoughts

👭 Taking an effort to know your team members as a person

👔 Understanding that developing soft skills is more important than continuing to develop technical depth

Last one…

Get ready to have hard conversations, get ready to share feedback with folks that they don’t want to hear, in some cases, with your ex-team members.

If you’re considering taking the leap into management, know that it’s a different world. But with the right mindset, it can be a rewarding journey!

Prioritizing as a Solo Founder: Lessons from Adora Cheung’s Talk

As I am learning how I should be prioritizing my time as a solo founder, I came across Adora Cheung’s video on this topic. (h/t Sean Burke)

This video (link in the comments) is an excellent resource for founders of the early stage startups. Here are a few key insights I gained from her talk (that are still a work in progress for me):

🎯 Distinguishing Real vs. Fake Progress:

Focus on tasks that contribute to real startup progress, directly impacting our primary KPI (Key Performance Indicator), such as revenue or active users. Avoid low-value tasks that only offer the illusion of progress.

💬 Focusing on Talking to Users and Iterating on Product:

Two core areas to concentrate on are talking to users and building/iterating the product. These tasks have a direct impact on understanding customer needs, and driving revenue.

📝 Importance of Consistent Weekly Updates:

Regularly sharing honest and consistent weekly updates allows us to track progress, learn from experiences, and fine-tune our task prioritization skills.

⏰ Implementing the Maker’s / Manager’s Schedule:

Minimize context switching and improve productivity by adopting the Maker’s Schedule; Manager’s Schedule. Dedicate specific blocks of time for tasks like coding and meetings/talking to users.

🚀 Embracing Fast Decision-Making and Learning:

Speed is essential for startups. Making decisions thoughtfully and quickly enables faster learning and adaptation.

📝 Keeping a Task List and Avoiding Low-Value Work:

Maintain a task list and be vigilant about excluding tasks that do not contribute to our primary KPI. Resist the temptation to engage in activities like attending conferences or optimizing irrelevant metrics.

📖 Journaling for Self-Awareness and Improvement:

Regularly journaling our daily activities helps identify and eliminate low-value work that may sneak into our schedules. This helps with better time allocation.

🎢 Striving for High-Impact, Low-Complexity Tasks:

Optimize productivity by tackling high-impact tasks with low complexity first. Choose tasks that can be completed quickly and significantly impact our primary KPI.

Self Reviews: From Tasks to Impact

Many junior software engineers hate writing self reviews.

It’s counterintuitive, but I have seen folks postponing until the last day of the deadline.

When they write it, their write-up is focused on what work they did, and what projects they completed.

But here’s the thing: when you write a review, you need to focus on what impact you created instead of just listing out the work done.

If you only write about the work you did, you are relying on your manager to figure out the impact of your efforts.

Sure, your managers need to know about the impact, but why not make it easy for them and explicitly mention what matters?

Take the time to keep a log of the impact you created through projects, meetings, mentoring, and partnerships. Don’t forget to also list out your areas of improvement.

Self reviews have a direct impact on your career growth and compensation. So don’t take it lightly. It’s your chance to be your own advocate.

Fueling Growth and Recognition with Quick Feedback

I have seen new managers make this mistake all the time.

When you have a direct report who needs to receive constructive feedback immediately, don’t wait for the next 1-1.

Longer you wait, harder it will be to deliver the feedback. Same is true for positive feedback.

I have had two types of managers in my career.

Ones who provided timely feedback immediately and ones who provided feedback when I asked for it.

It was hard in the moment to hear constructive feedback right after the meeting or presentation. But when I look back that’s when I grew the most.

When manager waits too long to acknowledge a job well done, the impact of our praise might diminish.

Similarly, constructive feedback can lose its effectiveness if it’s given too late.

It is ok to have a quick conversation outside of a formal meeting and share the feedback while it’s fresh.

Elevating Career Conversations: Empowering Growth Through the GROW Framework

Most new engineering managers struggle with career conversations with their reports.

Most junior engineers don’t know how to drive career conversations either.

I have been there. But as I gained more experience, I realized career conversations need to be a lot broader than just discussing a promotion.

You can’t help your report grow if you don’t know what kind of work energizes them, what skills they want to develop, and why.

As a manager you don’t need to have all the answers, it’s more about acting as a sounding board, supporting your reports, and empowering them.

One of the frameworks I have found useful to structure these conversations is GROW

1️⃣ Goal – what do they want?

Start by identifying what your report wants to achieve in their career. What are their career ambitions? By understanding their goals, you can align their development with the big picture.

 2️⃣ Reality – what is happening now?

Take a step back and assess where they currently stand. What are they good at? Understanding their current reality will help chart a path forward.

 3️⃣ Options – what are some of the options to close the gap?

What steps can they take to reach one step closer to that long-term goal? You can brainstorm and list down multiple options

4️⃣ Will – what is the small achievable step can they commit to today?

Out of all the discussed options, what can they commit to? As a manager how can you support them get there?

So next time you find yourself struggling with career conversations, give the GROW framework a try.

If you have found any other frameworks or approaches useful, share them in the comments 💬

Turning Negative Feedback into Personal Growth

Early in my career, I used to respond to negative feedback right away because I always felt that there is another side to the story that my manager doesn’t know about.

However, later I realized, as much as it is hard to receive negative feedback, delivering is not easy either. Good managers prepare and deliver constructive feedback thoughtfully.

When you are on the receiving end, it’s essential to handle it with grace. I know, this is easier said than done.

Here are some techniques that have helped me navigate these conversations.

😌 Resist the urge to defend it immediately:

It’s natural to feel defensive when faced with criticism, but reacting impulsively can escalate the situation. Take a deep breath, and remind yourself that feedback is an opportunity for growth and improvement.

🙏 Thank them for the feedback:

Expressing gratitude for the feedback, even if it’s not what we want to hear, shows humility and a willingness to learn. A simple “Thank you for sharing your perspective” goes a long way.

🧘‍♂️ Internalize it and reflect on it the next day:

Sometimes, the initial blow of negative feedback can stop us from processing it rationally. Instead of going deep into it immediately, take some time to digest the feedback and reflect on it the next day. This has helped me look at the feedback more objectively.

👀 Watch your emotions:

Negative feedback can trigger frustration, disappointment, or even anger. However, try to stay calm, listen actively, and focus on understanding the feedback’s essence.

What else has worked for you when faced with negative feedback?