This post contains my reading notes on the book The Manager’s Path. Note that I am still reading the book and this is my in-progress running notes.
Management 101
What to expect from a manager
- The experience of being managed is the foundation on which you build your own management philosophy
- Different management characters:
- Benign neglect: the manager just leaves them alone entirely and the engineer just kind of knows what to work on
- Neglectful manager: ignore you when you need help; avoid meeting with you; never give you feedback
- Micromanager: questions every detail of everything you do and refuse to let you make any decisions on your own
- Actively abusive manager: neglect you until they want to yell at you for something
- Good managers: care about you as a person; actively work to help you grow; teach you important skills and provide valuable feedback; help you navigate difficult situations; help you understand what’s important to focus on
One-on-one meetings
- An essential feature of a good working relationship
- Purpose 1: Create human connection between you and your manager
- Letting your manager into your life a little bit is important: when stressful things happening, it will be much easier to ask your manager for what you need
- Great managers notice when your normal energy level changes and hopefully care enough to ask you about it
- Being an introvert is not an excuse for making no effort to treat people like real human beings
- The bedrock of strong teams is human connection, which leads to trust. Real trust requires the ability and willingness to be vulnerable in front of each other
- Your manager will hopefully treat you like a human who has a life outside of work, and spend a few minutes talking about that life when you meet
- Purpose 2: Provides a regular opportunity for you to speak privately with your manager about whatever needs discussing
- Try put a little thought into the agenda before the meeting
- Good 1-1s are not status meetings for most people
- If you are a manager reporting up to senior management, you may use it to discuss the status of critical projects
- If you are an individual contributor, a 1-1 as a status meeting is repetitive and probably boring
- If your 1-1 is a dreadful obligation for delivering a boring status report, try using email or chat for that purpose to free up time
- Encourage you to share the responsibility of having good 1-1s with your manager; prepare the time yourself; push to reschedule instead of cancellation
Feedback and workplace guidance
- Not just performance reviews
- The only thing worse than getting behavioral feedback is not getting it at all or getting it only during your performance review
- The feedback ideally will be somewhat public if it’s praise, and private if it’s criticism
- Good managers know that delivering feedback quickly is more valuable than waiting for a convenient time to say something
- Asking your manager for advice is a good way to show that you respect her
- Your manager needs to be your number one ally
- If you are unhappy or need something, say it
- Managers sometimes assign stretch projects that help you grow; good managers will help you understand the value of the work you are doing even when it is not fun or glamorous
- As you become more senior, the amount of personal feedback decreases and expect the type of feedback to change from personal to team- or strategy-related input
Training and career growth
- Your manager holds some responsibility for helping you find training and resources for career growth
- Expect that you are responsible for figuring out what types of training you want
- Promotion and compensation: guidance through the process of preparing promotion packet; your direct manager will usually be essential in advocating for your promotion and getting it approved
- Managers usually cannot guarantee promotions but good managers know what the system is looking for and can help you build those achievements and skills
- Opportunities for promotions are more rare for more senior levels; your manager may need you to find and propose achievements that qualify you for the next level
- Find the best managers and mentors you can and watch them work
- Try to find people to work for who push you to succeed but also reward you for success, who inspire you to stretch yourself
How to be managed
- Spend time thinking about what you want
- Your manager cannot read your mind; figuring out what you want to do, learn, and what will make you happy rests on your shoulders
- There’s much uncertainty in the world: once you get the job you thought you wanted, the enjoyment eventually fades and you find yourself looking for something else
- Use your manager to discover what’s possible where you are, but look to understand yourself in order to figure out where you want to go next
- You are responsible for yourself
- Bring agendas to your 1-1s
- Advocate for yourself
- Take feedback graciously even when you don’t agree with it
- When you are persistently unhappy, say something
- Set your own boundaries
- Sometimes if you want a bigger job, you will have to work more hours to get it
- If your manager is conscientious, she’ll appreciate your candor
- Give your manager a break
- She may be stressed out sometimes; she’ll be imperfect and say dumb things, or do things that feel unfair or harmful to you
- Her job is to do the best thing for the company and the team; not to make you happy all the time
- Provide feedback but understand that she may not listen or change
- As you become more senior, your manager expects you to bring solutions, not problems
- Choose your managers wisely
- Consider not only the job, company, and the pay, but also the manager when evaluating job opportunities
- Strong managers know how to play the game at their company: get you promoted, get you attention and feedback from important people, have strong networks, get you jobs even after you stop working for them
- There’s a difference between a strong manager and a manager that you like as a friend, or even one you respect as an engineer
- Plenty of great engineers make ineffective managers because they don’t know or want to deal with politics of leadership
