Manager 138

How technical should an EM be?

2023-08-07T00:00:00+00:00

An EM should be technical / “hands on” enough to be a reviewer for design docs and make a monitoring dashboard for the team’s KPIs, but should not be a blocker for reviewing code and should care enough about coaching to delegate writing design docs to the TLs.

Someone other than the EM ought to review all code since more than one person who writes code should have context on all new code. Therefore, I only spend my time reading code when it was the most valuable use of my time. In practice, I spend less than an hour a week reading my teams code because everything else is more valuable: coaching my team on project execution, improving meetings and processes, hiring, and using standing meetings with peers to resolve local prioritization issues gracefully and ensure the organization has a coherent strategy that maximizes the value for the customer.

It’s tempting to be more “hands on,” but that should be a rare thing you do to keep your skills sharp; if being “hands on” is required by your team, you should probably spend your time differently for 2 months to fix that.

The best project managers are Financial Advisors

2023-08-04T00:00:00+00:00

Consider the aphorism that “communication is the tax you pay for the privilege of being in a large organization.”

The best project managers are Financial advisors. Their job to optimize your taxes: they recommend changes (to your processes) in an attempt make sure you pay enough taxes but as little as possible.

The mediocre project managers CPAs. Their job is to pay your taxes for you. They still make you do most of the work of finding paperwork and they don’t care how much you pay.

The worst project managers are auditors. They make sure you paid your taxes and bring in the authorities if you have not.

Whole product for projects

2023-01-21T00:00:00+00:00

Crossing the Chasm⊕ (Moore 2014)

introduces the concept of the “Whole product metaphor,” which I adapted for talking to engineers about various ways to view the scope of a project.

In short, a project can be understood to have multiple layers. When an engineer says a project is or will be “done,” it is really helpful to clarify what version of the project they’re talking about.

The innermost layer is the “technical project.” This layer involves all work to make the project do the things it says it is going to do, i.e. writing the code that achieves the goals of the project without breaking existing functionality.
Outside that layer is the “deployed project.” This layer involves any additional work necessary to make the project robust, e.g. integration testing, performance testing, capacity planning, CI/CD, monitoring + alerting, and actually safely deploying the code to production.
The next layer is the “expected project.” This layer involves any work necessary for someone to be successful using the tool, e.g. documentation, security, training + operational playbooks for supporting teams, and usability features.
The final layer is the “whole project.” This layer involves all the work necessary to ensure that users actually gain value from the project. This work includes onboarding users, measuring the usage + value provided by the project, integrating the project with other related parts of user workflows, and publicizing the project with users and stakeholders.

GREAT questions

2022-06-16T00:00:00+00:00

For both filing bugs and asking questions of engineers, the trick is to make it easy for them to help you with your real goal and to show your respect for them.

Fortunately, there is a simple mneumonic that works for most situations — ask “GREAT” questions:

Goal
Repro
Expected behavior
Actual behavior
What you tried on your own

Start with your high level goal

This helps avoid the XY Problem, where you think you needed help on a specific solution X to your problem Y, but X wasn’t even the best solution.

“I’d like to center this image vertically on the page and have text flow around it”
“I’m trying to shrink the size of this video file as I import it from my camera’s SD card”

Give minimized and explicit steps to reproduce your confusion / issue:

“I am setting the margin-top on the image to be …. Here is a minimal html file that shows what I’m trying to do”
“I am using ffmpeg. Here is the actual command line invocation I’m using: …”

Explain your mental model, what you expect to happen

“I’m expecting it to tell it not to put other images in the margin of my image but allow text to be near the image”
“I’m expecting it to read the image off the microsd card and write it to my home folder”

Show them what actually happens

Include exact error message or screenshot/details of failure. Show, not tell.

“Unfortunately, it ends up aligning just being put below all my other text content”
“Unfortunately, I get this error: ‘…’”

Show what you tried on your own

This is a critical step! This is the “proof of work.”

“I found this stackoverflow article which looks related. I re-ran ffmpeg with DEBUG=1 and got the following message, which was different than what I expected: …”

Ask a question, referring back to your high level goal

Do you have any ideas about what I could be missing? Or other suggestions for how to get the image centered on the page?

Other tips

Have a detailed summary (e.g. in the subject of an email or a title of a question)
Don’t ask to ask
When you thank them in advance for helping you, explain why you asked them in particular.

BASICC needs

2022-06-14T00:00:00+00:00

When someone is emotionally upset, they are usually feeling a threat to one of their BASICC⊕ I created this framework as a response to the SCARF framework from David Rock, which I felt didn’t adequately address the identity triggers of competence or character

human needs:⊕ The order here loosely follows Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, although we re-ordered the first three because BASICC is a better acronym than SABICC

Belonging	They want to be part of a group
Agency	They want to have ability to change their situation
Stability	They want their situation to be predictable
Importance	They want to be valued by others
Competence	They want to be capable and achieve goals
Character	They want to be morally good

When empathizing with someone to listen to them and see if you can can label their emotion and underlying human need.

Writing Accomplishments that pass the CFO Test

2022-06-13T00:00:00+00:00

The “CFO test” is “will someone who cares about the business but doesn’t do your job understand that you had an impact.” It is a great way to make sure your accomplishments are strong in a resume, performance review, etc.

Getting your accomplishments to pass the “CFO” test

There are some very straightforward transformations you can make to get your accomplishment to pass the CFO test.

Here is a typical “meh” accomplishment for a resume or a performance review that doesn’t yet pass the CFO test:

Built authentication page of the billing project launch as member of frontend design team.

Don’t say you were the member of a team (it is implied)

It may feel like you’re taking credit for other people’s work, but ALL work is group work and so it is implied that you were part of a team. Unless you specifically say otherwise, all accomplishments are assumed to be a group effort. You don’t need to qualify your accomplishment, although you can clarify what you did.

Built authentication page for the self-serve billing project launch.

Actually, I’ll encourage something stronger here: if you were a leader of any part of the planning, execution, or delivery for the project, you should take responsibility for the whole project (remember early point that all accomplishments are assumed to be group efforts, espescially on resumes).

Launched the self-serve billing project.

Add business impact

This “business” impact should ideally be a concrete number describing something external to your team.

Built authentication page for the self-serve billing project launch and got 1000 new paid customers signed up in 3 months.

Direct improvements of revenue or a org/team KPI are best. If a project benefited a stakeholder, it can be good to report that stakeholder’s impact (e.g. a platform team that added a new feature used by the self-serve billing project would say “Added dynamic kubernetes instances used by the self-serve billing project which got 1000 new paid customers in 3 months.”)

Good proxy measures of impact include:

Number of users or uses cases adopted and level of adoption or retention
Improvements in reliability: number or severity of incidents, service availability, number of support cases, recovery time, time-to-detect or time-to-mitigate, user-found-it-first rate
Improvements in throughput: latency, throughput, or liveness of a pipeline
Velocity or productivity: time to complete a project, number of projects completed per capita or time, number or level of persons required to solve, how often escalation to expert is needed
Influence: number of decisions changed, number of views or citations or shares
Efficiency and cost: utilization improved, capacity affected, cost

If there is no metric, there can still be externally visible evidence: shout outs, citations of the work by others, etc.

Again results are external: a good litmus test is “did we demonstrate that someone else’s behavior changed as a result of this accomplishment.”

Put your number in context

Please put your number in context by expressing it relative to one of “3 P’s of concrete performance” (past, predicted, or peer/population)

Built authentication page for the self-serve billing project launch and increased number of users increased by 1000 (+10%) in 3 months.

And remember — accomplishments are assumed to be a group effort, so it is ok to take responsibility for the sales impact as an engineer

Built authentication page for the self-serve billing project launch and increased Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) by 7% (vs 30% baseline).

Giving percentile of a population can be powerful and clarifying:

Presentation viewed by 103 colleagues in last 3mo (65% of 158 people in Foobar org), making it the top 2% presentation generated by the team in last 3mo.

Lead with the effect of actions

Finally, put the business impact first in the accomplishment. Barbara Minto says to summarize a group of actions using the effect they produce.⊕ For more, see State the Effect of Actions

We want to do that here too – our resume point should not be about the actions we performed, but about the implication of those actions.

One common difficulty people have here is they want to talk about the complexity of the task; don’t fall into this trap. Talk about the impact first, and only imply the complexity.

Increased Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) by 7% (vs 30% baseline) via building authentication page for the self-serve billing project

(optional) Include technical keywords

Since some Applicant Tracking Systems search by keywords, it can be helpful to have them in your resume. Rather than artificial list of proficiencies or artificial lists of keywords, its better to weave details inline or tag on the accomplishment.

Increased Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) by 7% (vs 30% baseline) via building authentication page for the self-serve billing project (NextJS, Flask)

Some other examples

“Got a 5 on the AP Physics C exam (top 5% of class)”
“Decreased time until first push for new engineers by 10% via creating 5k LOC puppet provisioning system”
“Got “Engineer of the Year” award (top 1 of 300)"
“Decreased # of SEV0 incidents by 10% via creating automatic canary analysis service”

Asking my boss for help

2022-05-22T00:00:00+00:00

I struggle with asking my boss for help in some situations, especially when I worry that I will be seen as incompetent because I should have been able to handle the situation myself. Unfortunately, this worry has caused me to not inform my boss about a situation until it was too late.

When I think about it from the perspective of a manager, I realize that there is a spectrum ways I could have informed my boss:

“A situation is developing; I got it and want you to know my plan.”
“A situation is developing; I have a plan but would appreciate tips.”
“A situation is developing; I need to talk someone to validate/develop my plan for addressing it.”
“A situation is developing; I need your help to resolve it.”
“A situation is developing; I don’t think I can resolve it.”

In the future, I’m going to try more often to use the first two versions of keeping a boss informed.

List of Coachable Skills

2022-05-20T00:00:00+00:00

Technical

Asking technical questions and filing bugs
Writing against APIs
Effective use of the IDE
Debugging
Testing
Higher order functions
Evolving code
Asymptotic analysis
Profiling and optimization

Backend

Databases
Concurrency
Tuning memory + CPU cache usage
Distributed systems consistency and error handling

Systems

Shell
Kubernetes
Operating systems and caching
Networks from TCP to BGP

Frontend

Machine Learning

Professional

Writing deliverables and goals
Meetings
Project planning
Initiative
Public speaking
Change management
Influencing an org
Business writing and structured thinking

Personal

Diplomacy and tact
Listening
Responding to emotional statements
Conflict resolution
DEI

Managerial

Feedback
Coaching
Writing performance review
Gelling a team

Spectrum of Intent

2022-05-12T00:00:00+00:00

Recently, a coach introduced me to a concept she calls the “Spectrum of Intent.” I love this structure because it helps me gauge someone else’s intentions when I am hurt by something they said.

Depending on context, it could be anywhere on the Spectrum of Intent:⊕ (Semenoff n.d.)

Different backgrounds
Inartful expression of emotion
Blame shifting
Inartful boundary setting
Inartful feedback
Lashing out
Bullying
Gaslighting

Often I don’t know the full context and I assume intention to cause pain where there is merely inartfulness. I should assume a more positive intent by shifting where I place them on the spectrum until I understand more of the context.

Below, I’ll dive into the details of each of the layers of the Spectrum of Intent.

Different backgrounds

The other person has made a neutral statement and I misread the non-verbal clues.

This confusion happens most across different cultures or when talking to neurodiverse people, but also can happen when people from different DISC profiles talk to each other.

Example:

But I didn’t make any mistakes, only you played poorly.

Hey, guys, Jan Maas is not being rude. He’s just being Dutch.⊕ Ted Lasso S2E1, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEgWPYH9eYk?t=13

Inartful expression of emotion

The other person is feeling an emotion and is not expressing it in a clean way. At this level in the spectrum, they are trying to communicate about themself, not me.

This mistake can happen for a variety of reasons: e.g. their kid was up all night sick; they feel unsafe expressing emotions at work; or maybe they simply don’t feel heard.

Example:

We need to schedule the time or else it might not happen!

might instead mean

I’m feeling overwhelmed right now.

Blame shifting

The other person brings up an “issue” with someone else as part of the conversation.

The “issue” they bring up commonly is masking an underlying relationship issue where their needs aren’t being met..⊕ This technique is very similar to what Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen call “switchtracking.” (Stone and Heen 2014, 118)

Example:

Well, you might want to be more responsive.

might instead mean

I’m feeling lost and lonely at work right now.

Inartful boundary setting

The other person is trying to protect a need they have in an unhealthy way.

Example:

This is messed up, let me just fix it.

might mean

I need some quiet time to think.

Inartful feedback

The other person is trying to give me feedback but has done so in a painful way.

Example:

We didn’t get the funding for this project because you walked in completely unprepared, without any numbers to back up our proposal

might mean

When you presented to execs without concrete data, what happened is they were unwilling to fund our project.

Lashing out

The other person is trying to cause me pain.

This approach is frequently unintentional; when people are panicky or trying to save face, they may act in ways that are otherwise out of character.

Example:

Well, a good manager would have avoided this issue in the first place.

Bullying

The other person is trying to get what they want by putting me into pain.

This approach may start unintentionally – lashing out that worked.

Example:

The classic example is shouting, profanity, or other threats, but there can also be more subtle expressions of this:

Good managers are able to find compromises; are you?

Gaslighting

The other person is misrepresenting the story to try to get me to accept responsibility for a situation that isn’t completely mine to accept.

This can be unintentional, especially in people who frequently find themselves in conflicts – it may have started out as blame shifting that worked.

Example:

The reason this project failed is because you leaked it early.

rather than

This was a risky project that violated the norms of the company and I wanted to keep it secret until it was already successful.

Another example:

(in response to feedback) If you were a better manager, we wouldn’t have had this problem.

(deadlines and communications) Well, you never told me it was due before the meeting.

Semenoff, Amanda. n.d. “Conflict Resolution Coaching.” Mindful Resolution. Accessed 2022. https://www.mindfulresolution.ca/.

Stone, Douglas, and Sheila Heen. 2014. Thanks for The Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well (Even When It Is Off Base, Unfair, Poorly Delivered, and, Frankly, You’re Not in the Mood). Penguin Books.

Conflict Scenario - Hackathon Project

2022-03-22T00:00:00+00:00

This is a rough draft scenario to allow practice of a two-party conflict. It requires two participants, each of whom should read one of the prompts below. After reading privately, they should simulate a mock 1:1 where they discuss the conflict.

Context: There are two peers, both managers, working within the same organization (an experimental Product organization). This Product organization has been long suffering because the Infrastructure organization is understaffed and unable to fully support the new experiments. The two peers have two different approaches to this problem and are now having a peer 1:1 meeting.

Peer working on a Hackathon project

You came to this company 6 months ago from being an early engineer at a startup and were immediately shocked by the technology choices made here – this company was filled with smart people, but they weren’t using any modern technology and and a really painful process for product development.

You’ve been suggesting ideas for ways to replace some parts of the technology stack with easier-to-maintain and industry-standard alternatives, but kept getting told that this work needs to be done by the Infrastructure org and they don’t have the resources to support these “new” approaches (they lack both sufficient people and qualified people). In the meantime, your team is constantly slowed down by their inability to use modern tools.

Eventually, you manage a discussion about the choice of technology that ends up involving VPs from both your Product organization and the Infrastructure organization. The result of this discussion is that your team has to use the tooling provided by the Infrastructure organization for the time being, but that the Infrastructure organiztion will get additional resources to support your team.

That was 3 months ago. In the meantime, the Infrastructure has deliberately avoided making any commitments to your organization and hasn’t even delivered on its own roadmaps. You’re working to build from scratch a new feature that you would have gotten “for free” if you’d been working with a modern tech stack.

Frustrated, you realize that coming up next month is a company-wide Hackathon. The company has a long, proud history of encouraging exciting innovation during the Hackathon. You come up with an idea: you’ll do a Hackathon project to demonstrate how much easier it would be to demonstrate how much easier it would be if we were using a modern technology stack. You get a sympathetic tech lead in the infrastructure org to give you some hardware and start spending some nights and weekends preparing for the Hackathon.

Unfortunately, your new peer is going to throw a wrench into your plan. They’ve said they don’t agree with your hackathon project idea and that they plan to tell the Infrastructure org about this project. If the VPs hear about the project before your team finishes the work to show the value the work, they might kill the project before it gets off the ground.

You are having a 1:1 with this peer and you want him to let you have the space to show off your Hackathon project.

Peer building relationship with the Infrastructure organization

You came to this company 3 months ago from working at a much larger company and were immediately shocked to discover a deep rift in the relationship between your org and the Infrastructure org that had been going on for 2 years. People on both sides had contributed to this rift. On the Product side of the house, your predecessor was not known for being tactful and your team had been created for the explicit purpose of finding experimental new ways of doing things that weren’t the way the Infrastructure had been doing them all along. On the Infrastructure side of the house, they had been unable to support the new technologies desired by the Product org due to staffing challenges and had also had a cantankerous leader. The situation had gotten so bad that engineers on both sides refused to talk to the other and were deliberately making less effective technical decisions to avoid relying on the other org.

As you came up to speed, you deliberately built relationships inside the Infrastructure org and realized that the situation was substantially better than it first seemed: the key leaders on both orgs had recently been replaced with people eager to mend fences, the Infrastructure org had made some strong recent hires who were capable of doing experimental work; and the Infrastructure org had even hired PMs who were trying to understand your use case and adjust their roadmap to better support you.

You’ve spent the better part of the past month slowly repairing the relationship between the two orgs. You started to have standing 1:1s with your counterparts in the Infrastructure org to keep information flowing both directions. You met the strong engineers in the Infrastructure org and celebrated their work with your team to start to build some trust and respect from your team, and then encouraged your team to meet them and create cross-org working groups to deepen the direct engineer-to-engineer ties between the orgs. The relationship has developed to the point where, for the first time in 2 years, teams from the two orgs are working together to make a joint roadmap.

Something suprising has come up though – you’ve heard from several people on in your org (and one or two people in the Infrastructure org) that your peer manager is starting a secret project to bypass the Infrastructure org by creating their own infrastructure. Their plan is to do a few weeks of preparation and then unveil their project during the company Hackathon in a couple of weeks. While this new infrastructure has some clear technical advantages (namely, it is using the modern standard for technology and so can benefit from community support), it doesn’t integrate with all the rest of the technology created and maintained by the Infrastructure org. Worse, this effort is being done in secret because it is revisiting an old dispute between your two orgs and the work is an explicit violation of a months-old decision made by the VPs of both orgs to standardize on the technology used by the Infrastructure org. The people who have brought this to your attention are worried that your peers project may disrupt the budding relationship you’ve been developing between the two orgs.

You have a recurring 1:1 with this peer manager; you want to make sure that whatever action your org takes improves the relationship between the two orgs.

Manager 138

How technical should an EM be?

The best project managers are Financial Advisors

Whole product for projects

GREAT questions

Start with your high level goal

Give minimized and explicit steps to reproduce your confusion / issue:

Explain your mental model, what you expect to happen

Show them what actually happens

Show what you tried on your own

Ask a question, referring back to your high level goal

Other tips

See also

BASICC needs

Writing Accomplishments that pass the CFO Test

Getting your accomplishments to pass the “CFO” test

Don’t say you were the member of a team (it is implied)

Add business impact

Put your number in context

Lead with the effect of actions

(optional) Include technical keywords

Some other examples

Asking my boss for help

List of Coachable Skills

Technical

Backend

Systems

Frontend

Machine Learning

Professional

Personal

Managerial

Spectrum of Intent

Different backgrounds

Inartful expression of emotion

Blame shifting

Inartful boundary setting

Inartful feedback

Lashing out

Bullying

Gaslighting

Conflict Scenario - Hackathon Project