The Transition From Engineer to Engineering Manager ![rw-book-cover](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Y7NBBunkBdo/maxresdefault.jpg?v=68bac731) ## Metadata - Author: [[Ladybug Podcast]] - Full Title: The Transition From Engineer to Engineering Manager - Category: #articles - Document Note: --- tags: [engineering-management, leadership, career-transition] author: [Ladybug Podcast] source: [YouTube] reference: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7NBBunkBdo] date created: {{date:YYYY-MM-DD}} {{time:HH:mm}} --- # 🏷️ Title: The Transition From Engineer To Engineering Manager ## 🧭 Table of Contents - [📝 Summary](#-summary) - [📖 Main Content](#-main-content) - [🗒️ Notes](#️-notes) - [📚 References](#-references) - [🗣️ Paraphrase](#️-paraphrase) - [📰 Newsletter](#-newsletter) - [✅ Action Items](#-action-items) - [🧪 Hypotheses](#-hypotheses) - [📊 Methodology](#-methodology) - [❓ Questions](#-questions) - [🔮 Future Research](#-future-research) - [💡 Implications](#-implications) - [🧠 Learning Styles Assessment](#-learning-styles-assessment) - [📊 Accessibility Assessment](#-accessibility-assessment) - [🌍 DEIB Assessment](#-deib-assessment) - [✅ Logical Validity](#-logical-validity) - [🛡️ DARVO Analysis](#-darvo-analysis) - [🎯 Conclusion](#-conclusion) ### 🔗 References - Include links cited in or relevant to the article. ## 📝 Summary - The episode explains moving from IC to EM roles. - It stresses communication, delegation, and conflict skills. - Stakeholders include engineers, PMs, designers, and leadership. - Risks include micromanagement, burnout, and unclear expectations. - Bottom line: treat management as a people job with business outcomes. - The Ladybug team posted the episode on Sep 8, 2025. See the episode page. [ladybug.dev](https://www.ladybug.dev/episodes/the-transition-from-engineer-to-engineering-manager) - The YouTube link is available. Some networks may block YouTube. Use the site page if needed. [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7NBBunkBdo) ## 📖 Main Content - The hosts outline core differences between IC and EM work. - ICs ship code and focus on tasks. EMs enable people and delivery. - Meetings expand for EMs. Calendars need guardrails and focus blocks. - Delegation shifts success metrics to team output and growth. - Over-indexing on “urgent” work creates fairness issues. Research labels this as “non-promotable tasks.” These tasks help the org, not careers. [CMU “No Club”](https://www.cmu.edu/ambassadors/july-2022/pdf/ft_no-club.pdf), [HBR](https://hbsp.harvard.edu/inspiring-minds/how-women-faculty-can-avoid-career-busting-busy-work) - Conflict is normal. Use shared goals and respectful feedback techniques. See Crucial Conversations. [Crucial Learning](https://cruciallearning.com/books/crucial-conversations-book/) - Product partnership matters. Frame tech debt as risk and speed. See INSPIRED for product practices. [SVPG](https://www.svpg.com/books/inspired-how-to-create-tech-products-customers-love-2nd-edition/) - EM role framing and ladders differ by org. LeadDev provides common patterns. [LeadDev](https://leaddev.com/engineering-manager) - The Manager’s Path explains growth from tech lead to manager. [O’Reilly](https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/the-managers-path/9781491973882/) - Uncertainties remain. Team size, industry, and culture change tactics. - The advice is experiential. Validate locally with data and retros. ### 🗒️ Notes #### ⏱️ [00:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7NBBunkBdo&t=4) Why consider management - Define motivations and timing. - Seize opportunities despite imperfect readiness. #### ⏱️ [02:01](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7NBBunkBdo&t=121) From IC to EM - People and delivery become primary outputs. - Code becomes secondary or situational. #### ⏱️ [05:54](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7NBBunkBdo&t=354) Calendars and energy - Expect many meetings. - Protect focus time intentionally. #### ⏱️ [07:51](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7NBBunkBdo&t=471) Delegation and trust - Match growth goals to opportunities. - Avoid micromanagement while preventing derailments. #### ⏱️ [11:55](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7NBBunkBdo&t=715) Space to learn - Let people try, fail, and recover. - Intervene only when risk grows. #### ⏱️ [13:42](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7NBBunkBdo&t=822) Non-promotable work - Rotate admin tasks equitably. - Watch gendered task patterns. #### ⏱️ [17:31](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7NBBunkBdo&t=1051) Conflict reframed - Treat conflict as choices among tradeoffs. - Use clear roles and shared goals. #### ⏱️ [22:11](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7NBBunkBdo&t=1331) Feedback mechanics - Make expectations explicit. - Give timely, actionable guidance. #### ⏱️ [26:52](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7NBBunkBdo&t=1612) Measuring success - Track delivery and quality. - Cultivate culture and growth. #### ⏱️ [31:58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7NBBunkBdo&t=1918) Career mobility - Support moves on and off your team. - Maintain psychological safety. #### ⏱️ [33:25](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7NBBunkBdo&t=2005) Performance issues - Use pre-PIP check-ins. - Set boundaries and offer resources. #### ⏱️ [38:15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7NBBunkBdo&t=2295) Cross-functional lines - Clarify domains with PMs and design. - Correct boundary issues quickly. #### ⏱️ [41:26](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7NBBunkBdo&t=2486) Feedback timing - Don’t flood with critiques. - Sleep on charged topics. #### ⏱️ [47:34](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7NBBunkBdo&t=2854) Core takeaway - Management shifts mindsets. - Communication and empathy compound results. ## 📚 References - The episode page with date and links: [Ladybug Podcast](https://www.ladybug.dev/episodes/the-transition-from-engineer-to-engineering-manager) - Video: [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7NBBunkBdo) - “Non-promotable tasks”: [CMU/No Club](https://www.cmu.edu/ambassadors/july-2022/pdf/ft_no-club.pdf), [HBR overview](https://hbsp.harvard.edu/inspiring-minds/how-women-faculty-can-avoid-career-busting-busy-work) - EM role context: [LeadDev overview](https://leaddev.com/engineering-manager), [LeadDev handbook](https://leaddev.com/handbook/engineering-manager-handbook) - Product partnership: [INSPIRED, Marty Cagan](https://www.svpg.com/books/inspired-how-to-create-tech-products-customers-love-2nd-edition/) - Feedback toolset: [Crucial Conversations](https://cruciallearning.com/books/crucial-conversations-book/) - Growth path: [The Manager’s Path](https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/the-managers-path/9781491973882/) ## 🗣️ Paraphrase - The show argues that engineering management is a people-first job. It requires systems for communication, delegation, and conflict. - It recommends framing technical work in business terms. It urges fairness in task assignment and clear growth paths. ## 📰 Newsletter - Shifting from IC to EM? WordPress teams feel this change daily. - Start with role clarity, a rotation plan for “glue” work, and explicit feedback rituals. - Helpful links: [LeadDev EM basics](https://leaddev.com/engineering-manager), [Crucial Conversations](https://cruciallearning.com/books/crucial-conversations-book/), [INSPIRED](https://www.svpg.com/books/inspired-how-to-create-tech-products-customers-love-2nd-edition/), [The Manager’s Path](https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/the-managers-path/9781491973882/). - WordPress-specific tip: align contributor ladders with mentoring sprints and The WPCC programs. ## ✅ Action Items - **DevRel** - Publish IC→EM office hours with Q&A recordings. - Share “task rotation” template and metrics. - **Developer advocacy: plans, talks, demos, and measurable outcomes.** - Demo “risk-based tech-debt” framing using real plugin cases. - Track saved incidents and cycle time deltas. - **Education: workshops, curricula, office hours, mentorship programs.** - Run EM starter series: feedback, 1:1s, planning, hiring. - Pair mentors with first-time EMs for six weeks. - **Developer experience: docs, SDKs, examples, templates, quickstarts.** - Build sprint ritual checklists and RACI templates. - Ship PRD and ERD skeletons with examples. - **Developer marketing: campaigns, content, funnels, and attribution.** - Publish “Manager’s Minute” shorts with measurable CTAs. - **Community management: moderation, code of conduct ops, surveys.** - A - Summary: Stepping into management for the first time can be both exciting and overwhelming. In this episode, we explore the critical shift from individual contributor to engineering manager—what changes, what stays the same, and what new challenges emerge. We’ll discuss common misconceptions, the mindset shift required, and practical tips for navigating your first few months in the role. Whether you're considering the move or already in the thick of it, this episode offers guidance to help you lead with confidence and clarity. - URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7NBBunkBdo My job is to help you in your career. I would ideally like that to be here with us, but if it's not, I want you to feel comfortable coming and talking to me about it and not feel like you have to hide anything. [Music] Welcome to the Ladybug Podcast. I'm Kelly. And I'm Emma. And we're debugging the tech industry. Hi, Emma. What are we talking about today? We're talking about the fact that we're dressed exactly alike. This is true. And this was unplanned, but welcomed. I'm not mad about it, but also I guess it's not that impressive cuz hey, you're wearing a black top and so am I. The stakes are pretty low here. I mean, who doesn't look good in black? Let's be honest. That's true. That's true. Yeah. I walked downstairs and my husband was like, "Oh, you're going for Steve Jobs today." Like I can't wear a black turtleneckish shirt. I used to have this I used to wear this like gold chain necklace. There was no no pendant or anything. It was just gold chain with like a black shirt and I look like that picture of the rock from like the 70s. Do you know the one I'm talking about? That was my Halloween costume last year. Was it really? Yes. It was the laziest costume. I unintentionally have showed up to work looking like that multiple times. I love it. I mean it's great. It's so easy. like just like pin a fanny pack to you as well and like you're good to go. If any of you listening know the exact image I am referring to, please leave a comment. It should be pretty a pretty pretty obvious. But yes, what are we actually talking about today? Today we're actually talking about the transition from individual contributor also known as IC to EM, which is engineering manager. I think this is a Were you ever an IC officially or did you just immediately jump into running a company? That was an icy. Yeah. Yeah. Because even when I was freelancing as like a uh there was one one company I worked with for probably two or about a year or so um that I was I was doing IC like individual contributor work for before I started my or while I was still running my company and then I also was an IC uh in college as well. Mhm. Okay. Nice. Yeah. I made this transition I think last episode we mentioned this but about two and a half years ago. No. Yeah. about 2 and a half years ago with a parental leave break in between. Um, but I know this is a common question that many people ponder as an engineer which is like how do I know if I'm going to like engineering management? It's kind of a big deal to just jump into it without having any semblance of an idea whether you'll like it or not or be good at it or not. So, what drew you to engineering management? I I always actually wanted to get my masters in business um and go through like an MBA program. I really like learning about leadership and I never was a manager like in any other respect, but the idea of managing people and dealing with people problems as well as technology problems was really intriguing to me. So, I always knew I'd end up in management. I just thought I would be a little bit more experienced tenure- wise before doing so. Although, frankly, is there ever a right time to get into anything? Not really. Right. And um but I was on parental leave uh with my daughter and my manager informed me that there was an open position on our team. We were growing. Would I like to apply? And I said absolutely. So um when the opportunity arises, you can't always say no. And it worked out. Yeah. And here you are stuck in this role now. Indeed. But I love it. I love it. Um should we talk really quickly about some of the responsibilities of a an individual contributor versus an EM? Yeah. Yeah. I mean on the on the IC front, I mean your job is to write code to deliver on the projects and and solve some you know potentially gnarly uh technical problems to to meet business goals. Like your responsibility is code the deliverable. It's very tactical. Engineering management on the other side is your responsibility is people. Your responsibility is the delivery of these projects by enabling your team to do that tactical work. Occasionally you do you know you write code as well uh depending on the organization you're in but it's not your core purpose in life anymore right? Yeah. I'm just thinking about like the daytoday what my day in the life was like as a an engineer versus a manager. I had a lot more free time. Um, that's something that people are generally pretty aware of is as a manager, you're going to have a lot more meetings. But the way that I look at like my day-to-day breakdown now is kind of in a few different buckets. It's like there's the people management side. So, meeting with your team, one-on- ones, standups, things like that. Then there's meeting with your peers if you've got like other engineering managers in your organization that you have to meet with. Um, there's also like reviewing documents and I can't remember the three buckets that I like use to chunk my work, but it's like it's not going to be opening pull requests necessarily. It might be, but very likely not. Basically, never for me. How about how many meetings do you have a day? My goodness. It really varies like depending on where we are in the the year because we're on six month planning cycle. So, if it's planning time, uh, or we're planning for 6 months, like I have no free time during the day. Like, I'm in meetings from like 9 to 4 straight. I I leave at 4:00 to get my my kid from school. So, I don't generally do a ton of meetings after that. But, um, I've also because my team is so senior, um, many of them don't need like weekly guidance from me and they I have an open door policy. They can check in whenever, but um, so I have one-on- ones alternating uh, every two weeks. So like, oh my gosh, at least 60% of my time is is taken up by meetings. And I have to be a bit more selective with how I spend my time. It's it's one of the biggest the easiest traps you can fall into. Yeah. I mean, I'm I'm in probably anywhere between six and 12 meetings a day. Um because I have uh project status meetings, I've got leadership meetings, I've got one-on ones, I've got those peer one-on- ones as well, and then I've got the I've got customer calls, I've got I mean, I've got so many. Especially right now it's it's end of quarter as we're recording this right now and so I have no empty space on my calendar. Yeah. Like I have to schedule my lunch as a meeting so I don't lose net time. I do that too not for any other purpose and sometimes I forget but um I will say though that like generally I don't have meetings most of the time I don't have meetings before 10:00 or after 4. So like it I do get uh some good amount of focus time in the morning um and can in the evening if I need it but like we try to keep Wednesdays as focus Wednesday so that we have plenty of time. Um but yeah that's a dream for me. It's never going to happen. It's not something that generally always happens. But um but yeah I think your schedule is less your own now. Your schedule is more for other people. But frankly, I find it less mentally taxing to have a day full of meetings than a day where I would be working on code. So like for me, it was it gave me energy to meet with people even as an introvert. So I think that's a good a good sign that management might be for you because for me I mean I'm in meetings. I get I am mentally drained by the end of the day just because I'm in so many meetings and I have to context switch a lot for these meetings. But I would be even more mentally drained if it was I'm staring at my code editor and I'm writing all day. I agree. Um I will say though because I am an introvert and social engagements very much drain my energy. My therapist was like why do you like management then? Because mostly meetings. I'm like it is but actually it's not. It doesn't drain my energy because it's focused around work and I I mean some of them are social but most like feeling exhausted. So I guess my situation is a little bit different just because my team spans from California to India and my manager is in San Francisco but I am starting my meetings in the morning and I'm ending my my meetings in the evening. So on some like there are some days when I know I have to do an early start like I start meetings at like 7. Um but I will block off 2 or 3 hours in the afternoon before resuming meetings again because I know I'm just going to need a like a mental break and that way I'm preventing myself from working 12 hours in a day. Yeah. Yeah, that makes total sense. I always tell my team to like get outside during the day if it's sunny. especially living in Sweden where it's dark for half the year it feels like and like a sun doesn't come up until like 9:00 if it ever does in the winter and then sets at 3. Um so we have I'm very fortunate that we have a very flexible work schedule um which doesn't always happen but in any case yes you will have less quote unquote free time but it's still quite important that you yeah you do attend these meetings. Yeah. So thinking through some other responsibilities, one I would love to kind of talk about at length is delegation because this is one that I think a lot of people struggle with whether you're an experienced engineering manager or not because basically you might go from I have all these things and I own all these things to I now need to take some of these things off my plate and I need to trust my team to be able to deliver and that can be challenging. How how are you with the delegation? really good. Um I try to get rid of all of my work to other people. No. Um just all of it. I actually don't do anything. Uh this is true. Uh no. Um I am actually kind of a control freak in like my personal life. Like I like to have control over things. I have high standards for certain things. At work I'm really good at matching people based on skill set or where they want to grow their skill set with opportunity. So, um, and I'm also really good at taking the tasks that nobody wants to take. Like we, um, Europe right now is enacting like the digital services act, which is essentially people or consumers of products are allowed to turn off personalized recommendations or not have uh, profiling turned on for certain applications, which yeah, it's for data privacy. Um, so we have to make sure that our product is legal and compliant and it's not a very fun task to do all the testing on our platforms with different types of accounts in different regions. So it's something that like I'm totally fine to like, you know, just take the tasks that aren't so exciting for the team if I have bandwidth of course or at least to pair up with them. Um, so I try to delegate the things that are impactful to someone's career or interesting to them. But um this is something that I talk about all the time because the skills that made you a really great engineer are not always going to translate into management and sometimes they can actually hurt your performance, right? Delegation is one of them. You're used to taking on tasks, many tasks, doing them really well and reaping the direct benefits. But now your performance is measured in terms of the success of your team and the delivery of your work items. So y as long as you can shift your expectations about your own performance, I think you'll be okay. Um and in the last episode we also had briefly mentioned making sure that you're preventing bias by giving opportunity to the same people over and over based on proximity or familiarity etc. Um so make sure you're delegating in a fair or equitable way. Yeah. I think one of the other things that is probably trickiest about moving from a place of taking action and doing the tactical work to trusting your team to do it is that they often will do it a different way than you. And it can be very challenging for you to say this is the project scope, do the thing. Instead of saying here's the project scope, here's how you need to do it. Now do the thing. you're it's important to empower your team to be able to learn and try to, you know, reason through a solution for themselves instead of you telling them what to do and like dictating that because that's how they that is how they grow. And when this happens, they're going to make mistakes and they're going to make what you can deem to be preventable mistakes, but we learn so much more from our mistakes than we do our successes. And so it's important to give your team the space to try and fail and learn and try again. And you'll, you know, eventually get to a good solution. There are times when you need to step in. Like if you start to see like the the trains kind of get going off the tracks a little bit, you need to push things and nudge things back on. That is okay. But there's a line you need to balance between being supportive of your team and and and empowering them to figure things out and like micromanaging. You don't want to micromanage them either because again nobody likes a micromanager. Yeah, that's super true. It's a hard line and frankly there are many times I second guess myself and I have to explicitly tell them I promise you my intention is not to micromanage you. Like so for example when we have different work streams that are ready to pick up um you know if people need things to do or have expressed interest I'll typically say hey you know this person do you want to work on this? And then I have to explicitly tell them for my own sanity like I promise I'm not trying to micromanage you. If there's something like just tell me to step off. You can do it in public or private. Just tell me to like back off. And I actually have had a team member in a very empathetic and kind way be like hey you know um like we don't I don't agree with your with your opinion on this matter and like cool I'll back out like thanks for letting me know. Um but um there's this type of work I can't remember maybe you know the term for it. It's basically non-promotable work um that more administrative like running team events and landing retros and it typically falls on the same kinds of people who may or may not identify as women. A lot of times I find myself doing this type of work like planning retrospectives or team events and there was another um woman on my team doing the same thing and I had a senior engineer uh he came to me and was like hey I noticed that you and the woman on the team are are doing all this work and um it's really great you're doing you're both doing a great job but I I want to make sure that you know everybody a gets a chance to do it cuz it's good like you said to let people do things the way that they want to do things um and not micromanage but also to make sure the burden is not falling onto the same couple of people because it's not promotable work, right? Um I can't remember the term for it though. We can put it in the show notes cuz I have a link to an article, but um as it pertains to delegation. Yeah. Make sure that if there are tasks that happen repeatedly, whether it's regression testing or um things like that, give everybody on the team a chance to do it because um and do it their own way. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Like sure if there's a process you have to follow for like compliance reasons then right but most of the time that's not the case. Yeah there's a this space for creativity and we want to leave that space for creativity. Absolutely. So the other thing that I would say that very important as a manager and shows up differently as an IC is conflict resolution. The types of conflicts you deal with change uh as you become a manager. And I have a whole lesson in my course on conflict resolution that goes over how to handle conflict between uh two people on your team, between you and a person on your team, between your peers, and then with your manager as well because they all require a different take. Now, between two peers on your team is probably the one you're going to see most often. Actually, before I get into that, conflict is like the defining conflict I think is important because we often think of conflict is like we're having an argument or something negative is happening. And conflict can simply be we're we don't know which tech stack to use. We don't know which direction we want to go down in this project. We don't know which project is higher priority according to like the business objectives. And so it's important to not shy away from conflict and the idea of a conflict because conflict leads to discourse and discourse is healthy. Absolutely. You could add to that. No, I agree with you. I mean where we see the biggest innovations are on teams that are quite diverse in many respects and diversity will naturally lead to a difference of opinion which is a good thing. That that should be the case. Yes. If you're always in agreement, then you you're you're not bringing in new ideas. Like that that is absolutely a problem. So looking at interpersonal conflict as an individual contributor, what kind of things would you say kind of stand out as an IC versus an EM? I mean, I've had like conflict on with team members uh as an IC and I remember running to my manager and I mean all feelings are valid, right? So I don't want to downplay my feelings. Um but at the same time he did kind of reflect it back to me and he helped me he validated my feelings and uh he was supportive in that respect but he ultimately put the responsibility back on to me to continue the conversation. And in the moment I was like I feel like I'm not getting enough support from him. And now looking back on it and reflecting I'm like why? Like I was like a 27year-old adult. We're both adults. Like we owe it to ourselves and to our team to sort this out on our own. And if it becomes unsafe, okay, that's a different situation, right? Um, but yeah, as a team member, I really did not want to address conflict one-on-one. I was not good at it in my personal or professional lives because it's not something that you see very often. Yeah. Um, and you're not trained, like for the most part, you're not trained on how to handle handle conflict. No, not at all. I think a lot a lot of conflicts at work are not personal either. And I'm I was always the first person to take things personally as a reflection of who I am as opposed to um like my behavior which can be changed. So like as an example, I was taking Swedish classes because that was um something I wanted to do living in Sweden and it fell I accidentally signed up for the wrong course which placed it like Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday for like an hour and a half in afternoons and I was working on a work stream with two other folks. Um, and I think one of them was frustrated that it basically like prevented us from mobbing or pair programming during, you know, a good period of our day, which is totally valid, but I never heard that feedback from them directly. I heard it through other people that they were talking to. Um, so yeah, it was a little bit tricky to navigate because I'm like, okay, I haven't heard this firsthand, so I'm going to go to them and like we're going to work it out. Uh, and it just felt like it was very painful. like it wasn't fun for either of us to do. Obviously, both of our feelings are valid like in the sense that they were totally correct. Like I should have fixed the timing of that situation. There wasn't really anything I could do at that point, but I could have at least acknowledged it, right? Um but on the flip side, like we owe it to one another as human beings and as colleagues to give that feedback to one another even if it's uncomfortable because the worst case scenario is you hear it through other people and then it becomes a bigger issue. Yes. Yeah. And it's it's so much better to just get ahead of it and have that have that conversation. Most people are, you know, are not going to take things personally when you do have feedback. It can happen. Again, we're not trained to give or receive feedback. And that's a whole another section in my course because that is another uh critical thing you need to learn how to do as a manager is how to give effective feedback and how to receive effect or how to receive feedback gracefully even if it's not effective feedback. Even if it's like it's the it's the you're doing a great job, keep it up. Or on the flip side, it could be like this this thing could be better. Like okay, but how? Like what what's wrong with it? Or even worse, uh you you said like you get told somebody on your team is not pulling their weight on a certain project when it's not even their work to do. It is a completely different team member's work that's not on your team, for example, for a cross functional project. And it was just like a misunderstanding about, you know, ownership of work. And then, you know, I that's happened to me before and I'd have to get very defensive about my team being like, hey, like my team is doing exactly what they are instructed to do here. Um, if there's if you don't think that there's a, you know, if we're not doing the right work, then that's a different problem. But we're doing the work well that we're supposed to be doing from what I understand. And this is this comes up a lot more with like your manager and your peers. Um and I think there's a whole thing that we could do on managing up because that's a again it's really challenging and I think I talked about that um in the previous episode too. Um but for you know dealing with conflict especially between you and a team member so like a direct report you have to acknowledge that that power dynamic that is absolutely number one. Some people are going to feel more comfortable coming to you than others. Again this is conflict is very cultural. is deeply cultural and some people on your team are going to feel much more comfortable coming to you with a with concerns or complaints or you know feedback with you for you and others are absolutely going to think that if they give you know if they push a you know push something into uh a PR that has a you know a typo and it causes something that they're going to lose their job over it. Like you need to know how to communicate with your team members, each one individually, and understand how they take feedback, how they handle conflict, and how you can best work with them. It's not a one-sizefits-all thing. No. And I think the resource you mentioned in the first episode, Crucial Conversations, helped me immensely give feedback to my direct reports as their direct manager. Um, but going back to your point about receiving feedback about your team, it's so hard not to feel defensive sometimes. Oh, yeah. This this is another thing. So, um I remember I had to give feedback to another manager in my like organization about one of their reports and I felt super uncomfortable. I'm like, "Is this appropriate to do?" And I think I messaged them and I'm like, "I really hope this isn't out of line." Like, I was so nervous and they were like, "Why would that be out of line?" Like, "Thanks for letting me know." I'm like, "Okay, that's really nice." But then one time I got feedback about somebody on my team and a role that they were doing and I realized it wasn't it wasn't their fault. Like, they weren't doing anything wrong. it was my fault because I didn't clarify the expectation on the role for them ahead of time. So immediately like I'm like okay um this is actually not on that person is on me. Uh apologies but yeah it's um learning and this is another thing learning how to take feedback but also recognizing that not all feedback is valuable. I exactly I tell my team this all the time. I'm like take it with a grain of salt. If you seriously think through a piece of feedback from all sides and you realize that it's not applicable to you, you know, um like if someone gives you feedback, I don't like your pink hair. I don't like the way it looks. It's like, I don't have pink hair. I know that you do have pink hair and it's like, oh, I think your pink hair is unprofessional for the workplace. I'm like, great, that's like your opinion, right? Right. Feedback can be a gift, but it's not always a relevant gift. You know what I mean? Some people are just really bad at giving gifts. Yeah, that's literally what it is. It's true. But I think the biggest thing with giving feedback that I've learned is that it's two of you with a common goal against a problem. And it's not one of you against the other. And as soon as um people are going to have emotions about things, right? But if you make it very clear up front that hey, we have the same goal. We want you to be successful. We want you to get that promotion. In order to do that, here are the things we need to improve. And it's uncomfortable. But like I'm on your side, right? At that point, it's not two people against one another. It's two people against a problem. and the uh heightened emotions or like the you know the part of your brain that's like anim animalistic when it like responds like the reptilian part I don't know I don't speak very good English anymore but um yeah the part that like immediately gets defensive if they feel attacked that part is not going to uh like show up if if you have a common goal. So, and even if it does show up because again it is a little cultural and I can tell you like from my upbringing I get I can get defensive very quickly. Um and but I it becomes awareness of that it you know it's it's your emotional intelligence. It's being able to recognize your own emotions in a situation and be able to say like okay I'm heated right now. This is not a time to be having a conversation. Can we like regroup in 5 minutes? Yeah totally. I recommend everybody take uh if you're going to get into management or leadership of any sort, take one of those. Like I got homework from my therapist yesterday that was like, "Please take this online survey about your strengths and your weaknesses." And I'm like, "Cool." So my top strength is that I'm kind and I approach things with a sense of humor. And my like negatives is are that um if I feel like someone's offended me, I can hold a grudge. So like I'm also very stubborn and I make very impulsive. Oh yeah, I can hold a grudge like until the day I die. But if you come and try to like repair the situation, okay, no problem. I forgive you. Right. So, but like being aware of how you are as a human being outside of work, you can actually ch like those issues, they don't translate into work for me. I keep that very separate because I'm aware of how I am like outside of work and I I make a huge effort to not let that spill over. Yeah. And and that is a really really important thing for showing up to work is is knowing you know when to pull things in when to keep things you know in an inside voice or with a you know respected group of people that you know I know a lot that happens at my company because I'm also in it and so as a result I am a like bucket full of like rumors and drama and whatever is happening and I'm like I can't talk about any of this with anybody. Yeah. Except for like you. Well, that's the hard part, too, is like you're going to be proving to a lot of information about people, about decisions being made that you can't share with other people. And frankly, as a leader, you should not be gossiping anyway. But sometimes it's really hard to not be able to like let out your emotions or your feelings about a situation with people anymore. Like as an IC there, the stakes are less high, right? But as a lender, you're expected to have a standard. Um, so yeah, that's been a little bit tricky because you don't want to tell people's like personal things going on and um, yeah, not that I like I don't struggle with it because I know it's not even an option on the table, but it's more like how do you de-stress otherwise then? Yeah, you have to find a you have to find an outlet somehow. Yeah, you can't keep all that internally. Mhm. But how do you know if you're doing a good job, right? Yeah, we talk about like performance. Individual performance is pretty easy to measure. How do you how do you know that you're doing a good job as a manager? I think you need to understand from your manager, you know, how you're being like what what does success look like in your role? Um because, you know, success in my role is not going to be exactly the same as success in your role. Um so understanding, you know, what you're working towards and and then asking for feedback and just checking yourself along that. So for example, you know, I am responsible for making sure the uh the charter for my team is being delivered on time and with a high quality bar. If it if things are slipping, I it is on me to make sure I I turn those things around. I also need to make sure that my team is feeling empowered and they feel like they're, you know, they're growing in their career and they're happy and so I'm maintaining a strong team culture that will, you know, contribute to whatever happens to come up in the organization. So those are the two like two of the main things and I have a million side quests that I have because I'm also head of IT, our security officer. I do all of our compliance. I do all of our cyber security. So I I wear a million hats at a smaller company. Um, and so success in my role has to span all of those. And then I'd say the third thing that's that's it should be across every organization is how you show up as a leader across your organization. how you're representing the company, whether you know if you're meeting with customers or you're even even just talking to other teams within your organization outside of your organization like if you have to you know work with finance on something you have to work with um a different engineering team on something like how are you representing your your org is also really important like your sphere of influence. Absolutely. What would you add? Yeah, I think like how the team is doing like we do health checks every uh three months to check in. It's all anonymous but it covers things from psychological safety to efficiency to work life balance. Uh and then we have discussions if need be. Um so kind of measuring that performance over time. Um, but I find that I like put a lot of emphasis internally without knowing that I do this on how people view me. Like, do people like me as a manager? Um, and the harsh reality is people aren't going to always like you. And in order to be a good manager, sometimes they're really, really not going to like you. And you have to be okay with that, right? Um but one of my like fellow managers like um you know like the whole organization uh will be able to submit like anonymous comments like twice a year and that goes up the chain etc. And sometimes like people have frustrations and they're totally valid but that means that sometimes they maybe will write things that are not productive or kind and but you don't know who it's about. It's all anonymous. You don't know who wrote it etc. And of course immediately I start reading these things and I start spiraling over thinking like is this me? Are they talking about me? like could this pertain to me in any way? And my fellow EM was like, you got to stop putting so much emphasis on like or finding value. No, let me rephrase this. You have to stop defining your self-worth as a leader by how people are viewing you or how they could view you. And I'm like, dang, that's totally true. I need to find another metric to like gauge my performance, right? So, like, is your team delivering on time? Um, what quality are they delivering to? Things like that. uh also play into your performance. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I think that's I think that's really important again as a transition from IC to EM like that is one of the most challenging things that you'll do is if especially if you're going from being an IC on a team to being the all of your previous peers now manager. That is a that is a tough transition because you're going from hey these are my friends to I am responsible for the their work. I'm responsible for them and making sure they deliver. And that means having difficult conversations with them sometimes. And I remember when my husband transitioned into uh a management role uh a couple companies ago when he went from IC to manager on his team. Uh some people were not happy about it. Um one could be like they wanted that role and and he got it. So you know that's disappointing. And two some people just don't work well together. And when that transition happens, it is possible that people will leave or move to a different team. And that is okay. And and this is this is a common theme in leadership in general is not being afraid of churn on your team. If somebody's leaving, it it's probably not personal. It could be like maybe you two just clash and you do not work well together and that is possible, but most of the time there are other reasons that people are leaving. There's a better opportunity elsewhere. they can get paid more elsewhere. They're bored. They're looking for a new challenge. Whatever it is, like it's again, you can't take it personally and and have that be a measure of how you show up. Now, if like half your team suddenly leaves, maybe it's a red flag, maybe something's actually up here. Um, but if it's just like one or two people or, you know, whatever it is, like it's okay to to have that happen. And in fact, a good leader is going to enable your team to be successful no matter where they are. you want to do whatever you can to help them grow in their career. And if that means leaving your team, then that's what it is. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I that's my one of my core values is like and you know what? This came from the very first manager I ever had like back in the day first at a college. Like my job is to help you in your career. I would ideally like that to be here with us, but if it's not, I want you to feel comfortable coming and talking to me about it and not feel like you have to hide anything because it's not personal, right? Most of the time it's a business decision just like you had mentioned, but also a lot factors into that, right? Like maybe they want to move countries to be closer to their family and they're not allowed to work in a different time zone. Like there's so much that goes into it. You're not responsible for other people's feelings and their actions is a big one. Um, so like if you are getting to the point with an employee for example where you have to put them on a performance improvement plan, it's going to suck. Like they're going to be mad at you because you're the one essentially saying it's time to do this. However, you know, it's you know people you're not responsible for their actions. Something that they have done have has led them to this point. I will say your job is not to make people like you, right? They don't have to like you. Um, you do have to make them feel psychologically safe and included. That is very very important. Um and you generally should have their best interests in mind but they don't have to like you right. Ideally that they would respect you and trust you is the big thing. Trust is a big thing. But uh but yeah that's um not everybody's going to like you. And that goes for everything in life. Yeah. And one of the hardest things you can do is is when you start to get into those performance conversations. having a performance like the the performance improvement plan conversation with somebody. Usually that means things have escalated to the point where their job is at risk if they don't turn things around. Um hopefully there are conversations like check-ins and like hey let's have a performance conversation before you even get to the PIP because you know I have had people come off of pips before and turn things around. I've also had people who did not turn things around and we had to let them go and firing people never gets easier. No, I have I have done it so many times in my career and it's never easy. Especially if it is somebody who you like as an individual, but they're just, you know, they're just not showing up the way they need or the way you need them to and things are falling behind. Absolutely. Um, and the other thing that you might not realize you're going to have to deal with are people's personal and mental health issues. Oh, yeah. That will happen. And it's very hard to set for me personally at least to set boundaries and not sit in their emotions with them, but I'm also not a trained therapist, right? So for me, like, and you have to gauge the situation for yourself, but for me, I like to share what's going on in my personal life because I'm comfortable with that. I'll tell my team, "Hey, I'm going to therapy like this afternoon for 45 minutes. Like, I'll be back later." Um, I find that being open about that makes people feel that they can like, "Oh, my manager's going to therapy. is that something I should try if I'm struggling too or like oh I'm comfortable sharing that side of myself too. It's not like I'm the only one doing this. Now again that might not be the case and that's totally fine. It's not an expectation. It is just it's the same with being friends or friendly with your team members. You don't have to get along on like a personal level, right? You do have to respect and respect each other. But um but yeah, that's kind of how I lead is from like a compassion standpoint. Um, but you are you're going to hear people's mental health issues and it's going to be hard for you not to like be there with them or give them advice, but you have to maintain that like professional boundary and and give them the resources if they are available through your company and all of those things. Yep. Absolutely. Yeah. And and you know, you're of course you never force somebody to share something they don't want, especially personal. Some people, you know, they they prefer to keep their personal life personal and they don't want to bring their personal life into the workplace. And that is a perfectly acceptable thing. The only time it starts to matter is when they they are not showing up, right? And there's a difference between bringing your whole self to work and showing up for work. Cuz like the whole idea of bringing your whole self to work, if you're comfortable with doing that, great. But I would never expect you to just be open about literally everything that's happening in your life. I want you to show up. I want you to, you know, include yourself on the conversations that we're having. I want you to be present, but I would never say, "Okay, well, now let's talk about all of our, you know, our traumas. Let's trauma bond now." Yeah. No, totally. And it's not necessarily nice to like bring all of that to work and put that on other people as well because you don't know what they're going through. I will say though, like if I'm Oh my gosh, over the past like two years, I've gone through some really, really difficult things with my health, especially like I was hospitalized with pneumonia and I had gone through eight pregnancy losses over the past like 3 years. Um, and it was really affecting my ability to physically be at work because I had a lot of doctor's appointments or I was in the hospital. And I, you know, I don't want people to like speculate like what's going on with me or like why do I why is my calendar like why do I have a couple private meetings on there like you know so I made the decision to to be open with my team about it and I wasn't uh forced to by anybody but I thought you know you know also for me to bring my whole self to work which I want to um like I need to be honest with them about what's going on with me because I'm physically just not able to contribute the way I want to right now and it was very wellreceived and some actually like during 101 ones like asked me further. They asked me very pointed questions which frankly like I welcome because I'm like I'm happy to tell them I'm an open book. Um however it's not for everybody. Um and I always tell people like share what you're comfortable with or don't share at all and it's totally fine and you're welcome here regardless. I love that. It's s it's such important on on the communication side of things, you know, understanding again like how how your team communicates, how you want to communicate, how to communicate in a broader audience and when it's time to kind of like not talk. Yeah. And with that also comes standing your ground at times and sometimes you have to do that in public and it can be very uncomfortable for everybody else around. I can tell you a couple years ago I was in a meeting with my team and my product manager at the time and the product manager was greatly overstepping into my into my territory. Um to the point where like if it slips then sure it's fine. I you know even yesterday I overstepped on accident for uh one of my product managers to you know roll something out because I thought we had already announced it but we ended up not announcing it yet. Um, like there are things that can happen at times, but in this particular situation, it happened so many times in the same meeting that I finally had to like stop the meeting and say, "Hey, I need you to let me do my work and you focus on your work." And that is a like that was really awkward for the team to kind of sit there and listen to that, but they also need to see me standing my ground and say like this is okay to do and if I overstep in your territory, like I want you to say, "Hey, hey, Kelly, like I got this." Yeah. And like you said, like let me know and I'm happy to back off. Right. Right. For me, it's like I'm sure I'll overstep in some regards at some point. Right. The thing is it's likely not intentional. Exactly. Right. So like if I if I suck, like just tell me like, "Hey, back off." Like I could take it. It's fine. I might cry about it, but that's fine. Yeah. Most people are not being malicious. Like most people just don't know where those lines exist. And that is like managing cross functional relationships like that is it takes time to learn. Yeah. Because you're dealing with such different context. You know, I know what my goals are in the engineering org. I might not know what your goals are in the finance or you might need an engineer to build something very specific to run reports on something for loss prevention and finance. And you're like this is the most important thing at this company. And I'm like, "No, it's not like we have more important things than your project." And it it becomes a very difficult conversation at times to be like, you know, where do we actually, you know, need to go from here? And that is, you know, you you mentioned this before, you don't have to solve these conflicts by yourself. Like there are times when you absolutely should take ownership of like this is, you know, somebody else is not going to solve this. I need to make a decision. I'm just going to make my decision. If it's wrong, then it's wrong. We move on from there. But if you feel deeply uncomfortable about something, bring your manager in, bring HR in. Like HR business partners exist for a reason to help you navigate these conversations if it starts to veer into a territory where you don't feel comfortable having that conversation. You know, with that product manager I had before, we got to the point where my manager at the time and their manager at the time and the two of us had to get into a meeting to hash this out because we just could not work well together. Mhm. Yeah. If you're if you're feeling unsafe, hopefully there are people around you that can support you in that conversation. Um, one of the hard lessons I had to learn as a new EM was not everything requires immediate action or necessarily warrants feedback. Yes. Sitting on things for 30 minutes, an hour, a day, a week. Um, obviously if you're going to get feedback, the more timely uh the better. However, I've I've been very careful to not I don't want to say pick my battles cuz they're never battles, but like pick and choose when I give feedback because and this goes back to parenting, right? If if you're always telling your child no about literally everything, they'll never take you seriously when you have a real genuine reason for saying no, like a safety reason, right? So, I'm very intentional what I say no about to her. Oh, you want to bring your umbrella to school when it's 30°C? Okay, fine. I'll let you do it. there will be consequences which are that you have to carry it when you realize that it's hot outside and not raining but like you know it's not going to hurt anyone right but when I say no she knows like oh the oven's open maybe I shouldn't go over there it's the same with giving feedback to people right like if you're constantly giving constructive feedback or criticism to someone at some point they're just not going to listen to you um so yeah being very intentional about at least I sit on my feelings for like 30 minutes an hour a day even overnight is better especially if it elicits a visceral reaction for me and I feel like I've been personally wronged. You know, I'm like, "Okay, let me sit on my feelings and evaluate in the morning." Um, that was a hard lesson to learn. I I you know, I still I still say choose your battles. You know, of course, not everything is a battle, but it's it's easy enough to kind of phrase it that way. Uh, and a story I often tell, one of like that same product manager, I had two particular issues with them. One is they never gave me enough details in the product resource document for me to make a decision on engineering resourcing and how to actually build a product. You know, if we were saying we need to introduce license plate recognition, I needed I need a purity for this and you're like, I'll get it to you, but like on like it's it's simple like just introduce license plate recognition. Like what do we do with that? You know, that requires actual feedback because it is affecting the business and being able to execute on your work. The other thing this individual just like got under my skin so much. It still does to this day. Every now and then I come across it. Um this individual like we had uh every six weeks a meeting with the executive team where we would go over here are the things we did the last 6 weeks. Here's what we're doing the next six weeks. Here are blockers that I have and here are some asks that I have of E staff like I need a new headcount or I need like you know more time on this or we need to kind of talk through you know resource allocation whatever it happens to be. We have the same template we used on the slide deck every single time. And for whatever reason, the two slides that this this PM owned, they would change the font. It was so just maddening to be like, there is a pattern here. There's consistent here. Why are you changing the font? And they're like, cuz I like this spot. I'm like, but why? Hey, put this in your own document, not in like the This is the kind of thing that's not important at all, but it's just it's a personal thing. I mean, I'm almost on their side cuz sometimes fonts suck in PowerPoint. No, but I mean I've actually saw this if you saw this, you'd be like, uh, there's one thing about changing your font and there's another one like this is the font you chose. Yeah, I've had to ask people to change font documents before because it was just not I couldn't do it. I mean, it's one thing if it's like an accessibility issue when they can't read it, but like Yeah. I mean, you know, do what you got to do. I change fonts on stuff. We probably wouldn't work very well together, would we? I'm like I said, I'm okay with I'm okay with change if it's not just like abrupt. And I think for every episode page on our website, I'm going to go change the font to a different font. I will cry. Font friendly. And the only reason why I'm not going to remove your access to do that is because I don't want to manage the website. So all you need you need I need you. This is one of those things where I'm going to choose to just let this one go. This is one of those things you don't have to like the people you work. You have to respect them. It's troubling for this podcast. Well, speaking of things we don't like or do like, do you have any uh resources of the week? Yes, sure. So the I'm going to share another book this week and that is the manager's path by Camille Forier. I think this is a fantastic read for anybody considering getting into management and who wants to better understand that path from IC to EM to even like a manager of managers or like being a tech lead. Kind of walks you through the progression there to help you understand more about you know what that role would look like and the important parts to being in that role. Um absolutely love it. It's one of those books that I recommend to a lot of people who are considering management. What about you? Yeah, it's um it's a classic one and it's decently short, I'd say. So, it's a pretty good one to pick up uh as a first resource. My resource of the week is going to be LeadDev this week. They are I think I don't know if they started as a website or a blog or they do conferences, they do podcasts, they do I use them for their blogs most frequently because they have a whole engineering manager section. There's some really great stuff in there, so I would recommend checking them out. Have you written anything for them? No, but I was on their podcast once. Okay. So, of course, I'm going to go plug that. No, kidding. Um, no, but I I haven't written for them. I I do read a lot of the articles that come out, though. Yeah, there's a lot of good stuff on there for sure. Indeed. I know there are some some very uh familiar names, the GSC who write on air, so it's pretty cool. And they're having a conference in London. Um, oh yeah, they do they do lead dev London and New York I want to say. Oh, I don't know but uh on the locations but I know that Camille Fornier is speaking. Oh, so how relevant. Yeah. All right. Do you want to close us out? I don't know how to end. You know, this is an ongoing discussion with my team because I am the most awkward person and I don't know how to end meetings. So often we'll just end it with awkward silence and then one of us says bye and we all leave. That is really funny. Okay, I'm going to walk you through this. Okay, thank you everyone for listening. I'm not recording. Yeah. Um, yeah. So, but really, you know, we're we're having a blast recording this this new season of Ladybug and genuinely appreciate you taking the time to listen to this one. And as always, if you have questions around management or anything that you want us to talk about or there's anyone interesting you would like to like us to have on this podcast as a guest next season, definitely let us know. Um, our contact info is on our website. Uh, you can find us on any podcasting platform. You can find us on YouTube. You can find us on Tik Tok for a little little shorts day. One day I'm just going to call it tic tac. It's going to come out, but it hasn't it hasn't yet. Uh, so with that, we'll see you next week. Bye. [Music], The Transition From Engineer to Engineering Manager, Ladybug Podcast, 01k6ec5gnmx9dbevacn6fr1g2t.