About a year ago I transitioned into management. I changed my role from Senior Software Developer to Engineering Lead in Zalando. In this post I want to share my experience, good and bad, things that went well, where I screwed up and what I’m taking from it.
A difficult first year Link to heading
As my manager put it in my performance review: the last year was one of my most challenging ones. And he was right. In theory my game plan was pretty simple: I became Engineering Lead for the team I was an engineer before. A well functioning and I might say one of the most high performing teams I’ve ever worked in. It did not take long though until the team dissolved itself. For one member it was clear from the beginning that he would leave. But it did not take long until the next engineer from this team said he would leave the company. This was a real setback because I value him tremendously as an engineer and enjoyed the interactions we had. Sadly he had made up his mind even before I became manager and for me there was no way to keep him. Back then and still today I was not under the impression that it was because of my transition.
High level discussions Link to heading
So there I was, left with a “team” of one engineer and another re-org about to happen. This resulted in me being asked to take care of another team of 4 people. What was about to come was even worst. From a company perspective the teams mandate, vision and mission was seen as too big and was supposed to be shared between two teams, in different countries. The nature of the topic was really complex and my technical background allowed me to judge that separating this customer problem between multiple teams and components was a bad idea.
In result I spent most of my time discussing and arguing about this topic. The team itself was doing fine in the day to day work and was working against our goal. But at least the product specialist was worn out in the process. While I as Engineering Lead was doing somewhat fine, because I had a team of experienced engineers and research engineers, he was in the middle of the storm. He had to deal with the day to day work but also providing the team with a product vision. This was really difficult as some of the discussions were towards splitting exactly this up between multiple teams. Eventually this product specialist also left the company.
Even though some kind of decision and agreement was finally reached, a change in top management rolled everything back. While this was some kind of roller coaster ride in the end I believe we are in a better situation now.
Classical traps Link to heading
I also fell into some of the classical first-time-first-year manager traps. Although I was not starting to micromanage, I might have been too hands-off for the team. Similarly in the 1-on-1s I started I was too nice and wanted to dodge the more serious and difficult conversations. Being too nice also had the drawback of not providing enough feedback. In Radical Candor terms I was in the Ruinous Empathy quadrant.
It took me some time until I became aware of this and started asking career or difficult questions about work situations. And giving constant feedback is now one of my top goals for my second year.
Another challenge for me was to start saying no more often. Starting in management this seems to be the most classical trap to fall into. Prioritization today continues to be a challenge I need to address more consciously. Similarly to delegation. Instead of doing things on my own I’m now starting to consciously delegate tasks and interesting learning opportunities.
Some things were positive Link to heading
But not all was bad and learning in baby steps. As I said before, I did not fall into the micromanagement trap. This was mostly due to the fact that my teams are mostly senior engineers and grown up people. I did not have to be the one telling them each and every day what to do. And I do think that micromanagement does not fit my personality and experience very well. My worst managers were themselves micromanaging so why would I do this myself?
I started to spend some significant time with hiring. I did not count the number of interviews I did but I was able to hire three new engineers to the teams.
I have also been able to further leverage my strengths like technical excellence, leading business and team up. All Zalando terms for knowing your technical craft, understanding business needs and being ego-less (or as I like to put it: don’t be a jerk).
What have I learned and what do I want to work on? Link to heading
There is a lot for me to tackle in my second year as a manager. I received the feedback that I am sometimes an information sink and that status updates have to be asked. This is no new feedback for me but in my new role I do need to find a way to systematically share updates.
I also need to work on establishing, maintaining and improving team processes. While one of my teams was somewhat reluctant to anything that looked to much like “process” and “management” I do believe that a bit more process does help for getting things done. I recently read that instead of naming this process a better term could be rituals. Sounds small but worth a try.
Another team related topic is team identity. What makes my team a team? What are its strengths, growth opportunities and aspirations?
My main learning though is the value of constant feedback. One of my main mistakes was to not systematically check in about my report’s development progress and where they might need help or clarity. It’s not like I did not have this in mind before. But somehow I think dodging the difficult questions and not talking about too uncomfortable stuff in 1-on-1s was a classical early management trap I fell into.
And finally management is also about empowering people and delegation. This is not easy to learn. When to delegate what to whom. I am learning some tools and guidelines for delegation and now need to start applying them in my daily work.
So, here I go, off to my second year in management.