What I wish somebody told me during my first year as a manager
Brutally honest letter to my younger self
What’s up 2021 Anton?
It’s been… What, 8 months since you were promoted? Such a crazy storm, right? Much harder than you expected.
I know you feel guilty 90% of the time.
- For not having regular team meetings like you planned to.
- For cancelling 1:1s.
- For being involved in every decision.
- For firing Harry, as he was a nice guy.
- For taking too long to fire Harry, as he didn’t give a shit.
- For being too easy on standards, letting shitty code get into production.
- For not getting along with your PM, when you know you should try harder.
And that’s just a small part of your list.
Yeah, I can see I’ve got your attention now.
You feel like EVERY. SINGLE. THING. is on your shoulders.
How the hell are you supposed to find the time to interview and hire, train people, perform code reviews, deal with production problems, have 1:1s, work with your PM, create a long-term vision, manage the scrum, and still find the time to lead new projects and write code!
You didn’t expect the emotional drain, right? That some days you’ll be so exhausted from being responsible for everything, that you’ll come home and just collapse on the couch.
Believe it or not, this is what EVERY engineering manager is going through. It gets easier in time. You get tougher, your people get better, and suddenly it’ll even feel too boring. In a year you’ll start pestering your manager for another promotion. You’re a crazy bastard.
But to get there, there are 2 things you’ve got to stop doing! Yes, just 2:
Stop being involved in everything
Stop complaining about people behind their backs and doing nothing about it
Stop being involved in everything
Yeah, I know this one will be hard for you, my dear control freak. You were the strongest developer on the team, so of course it’s hard to let go.
You have this awful habit of solving everything with more working hours. You are proud of your ‘work ethic’, and ‘leading from the front’. So if a deadline is approaching, you just work through the weekend to ‘help’ the team. And if an urgent problem happens on Saturday, you don’t want to bother the team so you just deal with it yourself.
I’m sorry, but you behave like an idiot. Seriously, don’t you see how annoying it is for your people? Yeah, it’s easy when all the responsibility falls on the manager, but they want to grow too, and you are just smothering them.
And you know something? In 3 months you are going to propose to Enbar. In 8, you’ll be married. A year and a half from now you’ll have a son. Your life is going to change. If you want to be present at home for your family, you’ve got to learn how to let go. No more weekend marathons.
So where should you start? It’s simple:
Stop controlling the day-to-day
You’ve got to stop obsessing about your old work. You are not a developer anymore. Do you know that PagerDuty channel you are constantly monitoring? Did you ever think about the fact you are not the only one who could do that?
Here’s a simple solution (which will take you 6 months to actually implement):
Have a ‘team rep’ for each day of the week. They’ll be responsible for communicating with the support team, and handling any alerts and production incidents.
At first, they’ll consult with you. Make sure to NEVER solve it yourself! Don’t touch their keyboard you little monster! Let them deal with it. With time, you will not even know those issues are happening.
Stop leading new projects
Did you know that in Big Tech the engineering managers are not the ones leading the projects? The engineers are. I only recently found out. Well, it seems they know what they are doing.
When a new epic arrives, decide who from the team will own it. THEY will meet with the PM, they will do the design, and THEY will create the Jira tickets. The revolution is coming my friend.
Yes, they’ll need you in the first project. Probably in the second too. By the third one, they’ll get so much better. Not like you, they’ll need to handle only one of those each time, and they will be able to focus on it 100%, doing BETTER work than you.
Stop being the go-to person
I know you love to be a ‘source of knowledge’. It’s nice when people always need you around.
Well, it’s time to get rid of that. Divide the different applications between the people, and clearly state who owns what. Believe me, they’ll enjoy the added responsibility.
Stop complaining about people behind their backs and doing nothing about it
Do you think the previous one was hard to do? This one you’ll still struggle with even 3 years from now.
Seriously, this is one of your most annoying behaviors. You spread around your ‘people are not good enough’ crumbs everywhere.
When a PM is not good enough, you don’t shut up about it to your manager. You even gossip about them with your team and your peers. When you decide that the VP Product is not doing his job well, you talk endlessly about it with the CEO and your manager. Same with Sharon. Easy to complain she is always late, right?
Do you know what you don’t do? You don’t tell it to the people themselves!
You are a chicken. Stop hiding behind your manager’s back, expecting him to do all the dirty work for you.
Get your ass out of that sit, and go talk to underperforming people. Yes, even if they are not your direct reports. Ask them if you can have 30 minutes to share some things that bother you. Spoiler alert: no one will refuse.
Yeah, and don’t plan to say X, and in reality, say X/10. I know you. You’ll chicken out and soften your feedback.
Do you want to REALLY grow up? Start telling people what you think to their faces. This is the only fair way for them to improve.
A final word
With everything said - you should know, you are doing very well. Your team appreciates you, and you deliver quality work on time. You really transformed that team in those 8 months, even if it doesn’t feel like it.
You are on the inside, you see the same things every day. What you don’t see is the progress. It’s like as a child, you don’t really feel you grow, but people who see you every few months surely see a difference.
Step back and take a deep breath. Look at the great things the team achieved.
And now back to work. Go kick some ass. Listen to some Eminem for weird-ass motivation.
Oh and check out that course I shamelessly marketed - it will really help you avoid some pain 🙃
What you’ll enjoy reading this week:
How to get more headcount by Will Larson
When to Use Project-Based vs. Staff Augmentation Models by
Very relatable article. I still can't confront people with confidence. It still seems easy to talk about them in my notes but in front of them. Getting better but I'd love to brainstorm or hear what others do to overcome this.
A great letter to little Anton from big Anton 😊