Elder Knowledge
When I was promoted to Engineering Manager in August 2016, my manager and I sat down and he shared some of his core wisdom with me. I’ve internalized it and it’s proven useful. Here is what he told me.
Build your story
- What are your technical accomplishments?
- What business successes have you delivered?
- What have you accomplished as a people leader?
If you are not filling up a collection of stories that answer these questions there is a problem - you aren’t pulling your weight or your current organization is not offering you the opportunities to succeed. Figure out what the issue is and address it immediately. Successful people do not wait for good luck, they manifest reality.
Stay technically sharp
To make it with the big dogs you need to be a Principal Engineer and an excellent Project Manager and and an excellent People Manager.
This is the real challenge.
They will tell you “stop focusing on engineering, focus on driving your team’s success”. This is true. If you are being properly utilized as an Engineering Leader you will not have capacity to architect a new event pipeline.
However, there’s an easy fallacy to fall for - that being technically competent is secondary. The most common gripe of individual contributors about management is how disconnected they are from the systems they are responsible for. Don’t fall into the trap of being in a sinecure. While you shouldn’t be architecting, you absolutely must be able to completely and thoroughly analyze your teams’ work and provide truly useful critical feedback to them about their work.
The benefits of remaining technically competent is multi-pronged - your teams will deliver better solutions, you can intervene if there are solutions that diverge from your organization’s technical strategy or your company’s strategic objectives, and perhaps most importantly, you will gain the respect of your team. Your reports will have faith in your leadership and senior leadership will respect you for your impact.
Don’t sleep on this.
Put your team first
This is controversial, especially from an HR perspective, but I fundamentally believe this is the most important thing you do.
Put your team before the company. This doesn’t mean to cheat or trick the company. But it does mean that you avoid letting your team get cheated or tricked.
Work with the best
Surround yourself with people who are better than you. Who you can learn from. Who you work well with.
This is hard to navigate.
While you have discretion on who you hire, it’s impossible to control who applies. Sometimes you take a “good fit” who isn’t perfect. Worse yet, you rarely get to choose who you work with or who your boss is.
It’s impossible to arrange a goldilocks configuration of bosses, peers, and reports… but it is completely within your power to build personal relationships with those you admire. Don’t play favorites, but spend effort to build personal relationships with your colleagues - above, parallel, and below. Relationships that you can leverage to learn from, to get support on challenging problems, and to help you blow off steam when you’re losing your mind.
Deliver often and never be questioned
Bike shedding is real. Everyone has an opinion and often those opinions differ from yours. People will sideline you, management will deal you a tough hand, and endless challenges will surface.
The solution to this brute fact is to deliver results constantly.
If you are always delivering success, people will understand you are skilled at your job and will relent on petty issues. This will grant you the political and personal power to be more effective at your job. It will keep you out of trouble if there’s layoffs. It will soften the blow when shit hits the fan.
Be impeccable and you will find obstacles removed right before your eyes.