- There isn’t a fast feedback loop (like there is with something like coding)
- Splitting attention (suggests only coding if it’s non-critical)
- Over avoiding micromanaging. “Do you feel like you know how to do this?” – this resonates for me as a report
- Procrastinating hard questions e.g. giving tough feedback or letting people go
- Deferring maintenance. You can’t always be “busy”. Slack by default
- Tech lead manager is harder than pure team management
- Need to stay on top of managing people, while also contributing technically
- How to have uninterupted blocks of time?
- People attempting to do both often retreat to which ever they find easier or prefer
- e.g. tech lead managers forgetting to perform the management part
- Can be a bit of a deadend
- Management leads to group management
- Technical leads to staff engineer
- Splitting time isn’t ideal for either path – perhaps this seems quite “tech job” specific?
- Tech lead manager: 2-5 people, provides technical direction
- Team manager: 4-10 people, partners with an individual contributor within the team who supplies technical direction. Can spend majority of time on people management
- Group manager: manages multiple team managers. Role depends heavily on quality of reporting chain
- Executive manager: responsible for whole organisation, reports to CEO
- Tech lead
- Architect
- Solver
- Right hand
- Leadership styles (S1-S4)
- S1: telling how to do it (high task, low relationship)
- S2: coaching and providing direction (high task, high relationship)
- S3: supporting (low task, high relationship)
- S4: delegating (low task, low relationship)
- Maturity levels (M1-M4)
- M1: lack skills, lack confidence, unwilling
- M2: lack skills, lack confidence, willing
- M3: have skills, lack confidence, willing
- M4: have skills, have confidence, willing
- Performance readiness
- R1: unable and insecure or unwilling
- R2: unable but confident and willing
- R3: able but insecure or unwilling
- R4: able and confident and willing
- Quote about energised over impactful from Michelle Bu
- Pacing career to your life
- Snacking
- Easy and low impact jobs
- Ok to spend some time on snacks to keep yourself motivated between bigger accomplishments, but keep yourself honest about how much time you spend on it
- Preening
- High visability snacking that gets recognition
- Basically an issue of misallignment between what you consider impactful and what the company considers impactful
- Chasing ghosts
- Driving a strategy shift that fundamentally misunderstands the challenges at hand
- Biggest barrier to a forty year career is burnout
- Prevent burnout by working on something you find meaningful, and managing your pace
- You don’t have to take personal responsibility for every situation
- How long does it take on a vacation or weekend until you stop feeling anxious?
- People really matter, including when you’ve stopped working together
- Prestige matters, but is quite manufacturable
- Makes everything more attainable: a universal lubricant
- The best roles take a while to hire for, and so are only accessible if you’re already financially stable
- Don’t need to get rich, but do think about creating the flexibility for you and the people who depend on you
- The engineer / manager pendulum (have now read)
- Compounding gains: investing in yourself makes things easier
- Things that seem hard now will be easy in a decade
- “This is an unstable combination, because your engineering skills and context-sharpness are decaying the longer you do it.”
- “Management is highly interruptive, and great engineering — where you’re learning things — requires blocking out interruptions.”
- “You’ll miss the dopamine hit of fixing something or solving something. You’ll miss it desperately.”