Transitioning from Engineer to Manager at at a Startup
Focusing on personal success
The transition from an engineer to becoming a manager in a tech organization is usually a difficult one. There are generally a lot of different expectations. Instead of worrying about yourself, you need to ensure the team is moving forward. You are ultimately responsible for the output of the team. You need to keep coding to ensure you know what engineers are talking about and gain their respect. You also need to set your cadence, find time for planning and other activities, and ensure your team is playing nice with others.
On top of this, your reports are going to be anxious to get off on the right foot with you. In general, it can be a tough transition. I try to keep things simple with anyone that has the misfortune of reporting to me. I tell them that I care about two things:
The company mission and goals.
Your personal success.
To me, it’s a simple equation. I will guide my decisions and how I interact with people whom I’m responsible for by those two things. In particular, if you help the team hit its goals and are a big part of that process, I will do whatever it takes in my power to help you also have the personal success you want to achieve.
As for moving the company mission and goals forward, that’s an entire topic unto itself. I believe High Output Management by Andy Grove to still be an awesome reference and recommend it to any new manager. However, for today, let’s focus on personal success.
What does personal success mean?
What does it require? It requires that I need to know what you want to do, what you want to be and how you want to grow, so that I can help you get there.
It may be surprising, but most people I’ve worked with or managed have not thought seriously about this question. Most have a vague idea, but haven’t put it into writing or committed to anything. If you ask the question of where the employee wants to be the most common answer is: the next rung up in the career ladder. It makes sense. It’s probably what they think you want them to say. However, most of the time, it also isn’t 100% true. Sure, most people want recognition (probably the biggest internal motivator), leadership, compensation, etc. But not all positions actually provide a chance for someone to highlight their strengths and have a day-to-day role that actually makes them happy.
For instance, many people say they want to get into leadership and management. However, they don’t necessarily enjoy the behaviors and qualities required to be a good manager: (compromising, creating consensus, deferring to others, emotional IQ, coaching, planning, etc.). All of these things I view as core skills and competencies of a manager. This next rung up requires a different skill-set than the one that creates a good engineer and is a specialization one should be confident they want to go for.
It’s also alright if you don’t want to specialize in this way. If these aren’t activities you like doing naturally, it’s important to realize that you won’t be happy going down this path.
How do you focus on personal success?
In order to focus on personal success, the most effective thing I can do for a report is to ask questions, get to know them personally, and try to eventually understand at a deeper level what they want. Truly caring about personal success means more than just a growth plan at work and what you say in your one-on-ones. To me, personal success is more about happiness and success in life than success at your specific company.
Truly caring about personal success means more than just a growth plan at work and what you say in your one-on-ones.
This shift away from just work growth means that different things become important. What matters most could encompass a wide variety of problems not necessarily constrained to the workplace. For example, the most important thing for one report might be for you to fight for them with your boss when it matters. For another, it might be most important to be willing to do yourself what you ask them to do, or to stay late with them to help finish a project. For yet another person, it could be to give help with some personal issues and for another to be a mentor for a difficult relationship.
Finally, many folks will simply need an ear for them to vent to. Oftentimes, what a person needs for their personal success in life is not always 100% related to work. Creating a plan for growth at work and laying out the steps to move forward in their role is an important part of this process. However, that’s just table stakes to being a good manager. Understanding what your reports need to make personal growth in their life and then helping them accomplish that growth is what is really hard.
All in all, these activities are the types of things that take away from your own personal time and are difficult to schedule, but to me they make the biggest difference for your direct reports.
Who can use that attention?
Reports generally fall into the following categories:
- Solid Performers: High output, not necessarily the biggest ambitions or talent to get there.
- Poor Performers: It can be difficult to determine who these folks are, but at a startup they tend not to stick around too long.
- Under Achievers: Usually very talented people that have something holding them back from being a star.
- Star Performers: Multipliers for the team, they make everyone else better.
Most of a manager’s effort is usually spent between Poor Performers and Under Achievers. Some believe around 17% of a manager’s time can be spent on individual poor performers. Part of this is that it can be hard to determine between who is a poor performer and who is an under achiever.
What happens to your top people? Often, this means they are somewhat neglected. Managers have the tendency to be totally hands-off and let them run on their own. I agree that this tendency is easy for me to fall into as well! Why mess with a great thing? Stars want you to be hands-off and let them run! But it’s also not right. Some would say spending up to 50–60% of your time on the stars is appropriate. This is because your top performers make everyone else better, they often produce 2–5x the output of others, and they are generally the ones that move the team forward in large leaps.
The funny thing is that many top performers got there because they embrace a growth mindset and are constantly working to improve. As explained by Carol Dweck in her book, Mindset; a growth mindset is characterized by the belief that well-placed hard work, strategic decisions, and help from others result in growth of ‘talent’, while a fixed mindset is one that results from the belief in innate ‘talent’ being most important. This mindset can be extremely valuable to individual and company growth.
I’ve experienced that my best co-workers are extremely critical of their own skills and performance. While everyone else may talk about that person’s ‘talent’, ‘skill’, and ‘awesome-ness’, the best folks will obsess over the few weaknesses they see within themselves. The biggest difference between the very top performers when compared to others is that they create real plans to go tackle these weaknesses (or enhance their strengths), execute them, and self-evaluate honestly enough to gather real data on how successful they were.
The biggest difference between the very top performers when compared to others is that they create real plans to go tackle these weaknesses (or enhance their strengths), execute them, and self-evaluate honestly enough to gather real data on how successful they were.
This is great news! Your best people are actively looking for ways to grow and get better! They got that way likely by adopting that mindset. If your company and you as a manager aren’t providing that path, then they can and will likely look elsewhere outside of your team or company for that guidance.
The question is, how do you challenge and incentivize your great people to stick around? This goes back to the time spent helping them be successful and creating growth plans. This seems to be a much better use of time as a leader than always trying to bring under-performers up. It also is a great morale boost to see that growth and personally makes the effort as a manager all worthwhile.
On the flip side, there’s one thing I can’t tolerate as a manager: those who aren’t attempting to get better.
I just can’t deal with it. That person won’t last long on any team of mine. If there is no desire to be better or grow in some way (even if it isn’t related to the company), there’s no reason for me do anything for that person.
Someone like this may be a solid performer on the team, but I’m not going to spend my time with them or fight for them.
Parting Thoughts
Over time, I’ve had some great managers myself, and some not-so-great ones. I don’t profess to be an expert, but over time, this is the philosophy I’ve developed.
It’s not that simple in practice, of course. There is some give and take. Sometimes a report’s personal success needs to be put on the back burner in order for the company to advance forward. Other times, personal goals should take precedence. Life, startups, and plans never turn out how you think they will.
Anyhow, don’t take this as truth. Find out what works best for you. I’m sure one day I’ll look back on my mentality today and find it naive. Until then, hopefully this helps someone with some of the same questions I’ve had in the transition from engineer to manager at a startup.
