Your First 90 Days as an Engineering Manager  ## Metadata - Author: [[Ladybug Podcast]] - Full Title: Your First 90 Days as an Engineering Manager - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/5c58a693-7e25-47f9-bd9e-85a16f9607fb ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Don't Change Things Immediately** - Avoid rushing to change things as soon as you start a role. - Observe and learn before making decisions to avoid harmful quick fixes. Transcript: Kelly Vaughn Don't come in and start changing things. That's a huge mistake that I've seen in the past. People think the biggest way, the fastest way to have a big impact is to come in and change things, especially problems that they see immediately. And that's not. Welcome to the Ladybug Podcast. I'm Kelly. And I'm Emma, and we're debugging ([Time 0:00:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/591a89dd-665b-4b57-8794-d769e316dadc)) - **Kelly's Transition From IC To EM** - Kelly spent her first 30 days learning and onboarding as an engineer at Spotify. - She returned from parental leave to a split team and spent the first month meeting people and setting up one-on-ones as an EM. Transcript: Kelly Vaughn So when I joined as an engineer, my first 90 days, I'd say the first 30 days were devoted to learning. So you're not really expected to contribute to the team's work. But instead, you're in boot camps, the new engineering boot camps with all the new hires where you do projects. They do what they call intro days, which is very cool. I joined during 2020 COVID time, so it was all remote. But normally they fly everybody to Stockholm and all of the like the CEO and all of his team are there and they all talk to you about the company mission and goals and all of that. So it's typically very cool. So you just spend the first 90 days getting set up with your IDE and understanding the roadmap and getting to meet your team members and all of that. So there's not a lot of pressure to contribute. And frankly, where I'm at on the desktop web team, it's such a high barrier for entry just because it's a massive repository with a lot of history. So we don't really expect people to be really productive for the first few months, especially as a new hire to the company. Like we expect six months approximately for onboarding. When I went on nine months of parental leave, that's when I came back as an engineering manager. Same, similar team, same domain, but our team of one had split into three. So I was managing one of those three teams. So I knew some of the people and I didn't know some of the people. It was kind of a good mix. But it all worked out in the end. And I moved on to the new team about a month in and just started learning about the roadmap, getting to meet people, having one-on setting up my calendar, meeting my peers now of engineering Managers in my product area. ([Time 0:02:06](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9737dffa-07d6-4ef3-8274-01f1d53c3d14)) - **Emma's Fast-Paced Ramp At Spotify** - Emma described an expedited first 90 days at a smaller company while shutting down her agency. - She learned quickly and was thrown into more responsibility around day 60. Transcript: Emma Bostian It was. Oh, well, it's hard to say because most of my career has been running my own company. And so there was never really a first 90 days for me until I joined Spot, which was almost three years ago. So my first 90 days at Spot was a little bit more chaotic as well, mostly because I was shutting down my agency and leaving my other startup at the same time. And then I also was trying to finish up agency work that was carrying over. And so a lot of it was spent, of course, learning as much as I can. I had a manager who I knew personally, which definitely helped. And I kind of just got thrown into it, honestly. It's, you know, at a smaller company, don't have that much time to acquaint yourself. I had a lot of people who I needed to learn more about, who my peers were, who, you know, the entire extended leadership team, my direct reports, they were all getting to know me. There was one person who started the same day as I did. And so he reported to me. And so he learned who his manager was on day one as well, which was an interesting thing, too. So, yeah, I mean, within my first 30 days, honestly, I kind of took I learned as much as I could, obviously. But I kind of got thrown into the deep end by day 60. And I had a lot more on my plate. I had a very expedited first 90 days, which I could call like the first 45. Kelly Vaughn Yeah, ([Time 0:03:52](https://share.snipd.com/snip/943a357e-4b1c-4238-98d3-794b44357b78)) - **Take Company Management Training** - Ask your company about formal management training and take it if available. - Use internal programs, affordable courses, books, or podcasts to learn managerial logistics early. Transcript: Kelly Vaughn Yeah, I would definitely recommend if you're thinking about moving into an EM position or are going to, I would say ask if your company has resources, like formal training that are relevant To the company because Spotify provides two programs that are excellent. They're called Management At and Leadership At. Management At is the logistics of the job, what to expect, how our cadence runs every six months regarding performance evaluations, compensation reviews, stuff like that. And then Leadership At is a week-long in-person event. It's not just managers, it's a leader who's not in an IC or an individual contributor role. So it's gonna be like product managers or data science managers, engineering managers, things like that. And you get together and it's still related to Spotify, but it's more about having these crucial conversations and difficulties you might face on the job. And you get to go to those about two, one to two months in. So it's not like the first thing that you do um but it was definitely worth it i will say i've noticed there are some conferences out there that look really nice for management or leadership They tend to run really expensive which i mean get your bag of course but it's at the point where like i think they're expecting companies to send their employees there. And I'm like, are companies affording this? Emma Bostian Like, even still, I'm like, $1,200 for a ticket for two days is nuts to me. So much. I would just say, hey, I'll speak if it means I can go for free. Yeah. Just because I want to learn from other people. But like, especially when you're at a startup or you're running your own company, like, it's not an opportunity. Yeah. Kelly Vaughn That's not something that you have to invest in. Like, if your company doesn't provide formal training, like LinkedIn Learning has courses that you can take for really affordable prices. There are books, of course. Our podcast is a resource. Plenty of, like, more affordable or free resources. But, yeah, if your company does offer formal training, take advantage. We also do interim EM ([Time 0:06:06](https://share.snipd.com/snip/322679b9-6003-4231-a309-0b0e02034ff3)) - **Try An Interim EM Role First** - Try interim EM roles to test management without full commitment. - Use interim stints to learn the scope and decide if EM is the right career path. Transcript: Emma Bostian Because you know i think a lot of people like uh there's an there's an article that i can i can link to and i'm sure we've talked about this a lot but churn majors has a an article on like the Pendulum of like moving between ic and em and i think a lot of people it feels like a huge commitment to move into a manager role because it is a very different job and to be able to try it out Without a like a full commitment is such a cool idea because let's say you're interim EM for a while. You're like, wow, I really love this and I want to stay being an EM. Then you know that is going to be your career trajectory. Instead of saying, I actually, you know, it was fine. I didn't love it. I want to be more hands on the keyboard. I'm going to stick to the IC side of things. It's such a good way to try things out. Kelly Vaughn Yeah, it's a pretty low barrier to entry. I mean, I wouldn't take that with a grain of salt because every decision you make still affects a person. Of course. However, at least on our side, like the folks who are standing in as an interim, they don't get to do compensation review. They don't get any salary information about their direct report. So it's not like the entire scope of the job. But I think that's, I mean, that would make a lot of sense, right? Why would you be privy ([Time 0:08:33](https://share.snipd.com/snip/75face59-16db-462d-a3d3-bdb1a46f5326)) - **High vs Low Performing Team Dynamics** - High-performing teams help a new manager ramp by being self-managed. - Low-performing teams require diagnosing systemic issues rather than blaming individuals. Transcript: Emma Bostian And one of the things that I've seen both sides of is taking over a high-performing team versus taking over a low-performing. Having managed a low-performing team in the past, I think high performing teams are a little bit easier because they help you ramp up. Like they're like I've managed very self-managed teams before and it's very hands off. Like they're like, hey, these are my priorities. Which one should be number one? Or so and so came to me. What are trade-offs we need to be considering? Or like architectural, you know, conversations, system design conversations, like, you know, we're stuck between these two solutions, which how should we approach this? Like those types of things are what you see in a high-performing team. In a low-performing team, maybe they're not moving as quickly as they should. Maybe they're introducing a lot of regressions. Maybe there are cultural issues on the team communication issues on the team just something's not working and you have to spend a lot of time figuring out what's not working before coming To a conclusion and that's a really important point to make because the last thing you want to do is run in and be like you know you hear from one person like this person's the problem. And they're like, OK, well, I'm going to fire this person because obviously they're the problem. And perhaps maybe they're not the problem to begin with. Maybe it's it's more systemic. Maybe it's something that's more procedural or process oriented and not like one particular individual. I've managed individuals in the past where, you know, I thought they were low performers at first, but what was really the problem was that they're working on a problem, like a problem Or a stack or whatever, that's just not suitable for them to thrive in that environment. And you pull them off of that team and suddenly they're thriving again. Like this is the problem with taking over a low performing team. You have to go in with zero assumptions. ([Time 0:10:11](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b21cacff-cfbd-47bb-a203-992976c845f5)) - **Run Trust-Building Exercises Early** - Use exercises to build trust quickly when forming or joining a team. - Run moving motivators and career trajectory exercises to surface motivations and history. Transcript: Kelly Vaughn I think it was actually great i didn't have any issues managing friends or people like i had no problem taking on a more leadership role for people that i'd previously met and also people I hadn't um although you do have to be very cognizant of not favoring certain people over another, given your history with them as a friend or whatnot. That being said, the tricky part is now you have to build trust between all of you, right? So as opposed to like just you building one-on trust with everyone, now you have to ensure that they're all building trust with one another. So I didn't think it was a strange transition. Something that I did right off the bat was I did two exercises with people. Um, one was called a moving motivators where we had this like, uh, Figma or FigJam or Mural, one of those collaborative tools. And there were a series of cards that laid out like, oh, um, essentially you had to rank things that motivate you in your current life. So like, uh, money is a big motivator for me at this point in my life, or recognition from peers, or autonomy to do my job as I see fit, or work-life balance. And you rank them. And at surface level, it seems very easy. And then you start getting into these conversations. And it's like, oh, I actually don't care so much about money. It's important. But like, what's more important is working on cool stuff. I did that with everybody. And that was helpful. And then the second one was a career trajectory where we walked through the past, I don't know, 10 years of both of our careers, where we'd been. And then we also marked them as like, how motivated were you at this point in your career? And we drew a line so we could kind of track like, oh, okay, I'm really motivated when I'm working on consumer facing products. And I'm not so motivated when I'm working on internal tooling. And we both did that for one another. So doing those two right off the bat really helped establish a rapport that didn't previously exist. So, yeah, I mean, I found the transition quite easy, given that, like, I had a manager do this with me. It went over really well. ([Time 0:14:45](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b58c792c-72ca-4ada-9869-1274a37ac133)) - **Share A 'How To Work With Me' Doc** - Publish a 'how to work with me' document and share it with your team and peers. - Include communication preferences, feedback style, availability, and some personal details for rapport. Transcript: Emma Bostian And something to add to that like a third a third document perhaps is a how to work with me doc have you done this before yeah yeah i i think this is so useful and i i recycle the same how to work With me document at this point and just update it um basically this outlines here are my working hours here's how i prefer to correspond with people is it email is it slack um here's you Know how you can expect me to communicate outside of working hours there are certain times where i'm actually available because of different time zones other times like don't contact Me on the weekend unless it's absolutely necessary or like after a certain period of time um how do you like to give and receive feedback some people like to have a lot of like external Validation in the work that they do. Like they want to be celebrated by others. Some get really, really uncomfortable if you compliment them in public. Understanding that. And then especially in the constructive criticism side of things, like do you prefer to have a face-to conversation? Do you prefer to have it in writing? Like how do you like to communicate? Do you prefer like a let me get straight to the point and tell you what's going on or do you want me to sugarcoat it? And that's not necessarily a bad thing. Again, there's a lot of cultural implications to how people communicate. And I can tell you certain people on my team who they want me to sugarcoat it. They want me to be as gentle as possible with them. And others were just like, this sucks. Like, this is not good work. And here's why. And, you know, that's part of learning about your team. And then I also like to include some of the more, like, personal things on it. Just, like, here are my hobbies. Like, here, like, I like to run and I like to read and I, you know, I'm into Pilates and, like, that kind of stuff. Just so, like, if you want to talk about something not work-related, you kind of know, you know, what I'm interested in. I like having this available to anybody who joins my team or a team that I join. And that goes for like peers, my upper management, any kind of like cross-functional leaders that are involved, just so they know how, you know, how I like to work as well. ([Time 0:17:01](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a781a28b-2e09-4fe5-9885-f0bc002f86f8)) - **Align Work With Individual Strengths** - Learn how each person on your team works before assigning significant roadmap work. - Match tasks to strengths and growth goals to avoid random assignments that fail. Transcript: Emma Bostian That's building trust. The next thing I would talk about earlier on in your first 90 days is more around understanding. And this kind of goes into the how we work with me side of things, but like how does the team need to function? What kind of rituals do you need on your team? How do you want to know what we have coming down the pipe? Are you the type of person who likes to balance multiple small things at the same time? Do you want like one meaty project and one small thing? Are you like, I can only focus on one thing at a time? And understanding, you know, how each of your team members work and how this fits into the overall roadmap as well will help you get better alignment on how to best set your team up for Success to actually deliver against that roadmap. The last thing I want to do is say, all right, here's our roadmap. I know none of you. I don't know what your strengths are. I don't know where you want to learn and grow, but I'm just going to assign these randomly and we're going to hope for the best. Nothing good comes out of that. Kelly Vaughn No, not at all. ([Time 0:19:38](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a6a5b6c4-156a-4e81-8830-183412f06d26)) - **Understand Business And Tech Strategy** - Understand business goals, technical stack, and whether you must set team goals. - Use that knowledge to spot process improvements and avoid changing things for the sake of change. Transcript: Emma Bostian We kind of touched on this earlier, but the, you know, making sure you understand like the business and the technical side of things, like what is your stack? What are you working with? What goals have been set at the top level for your team? Have those goals been set or is it your responsibility to help establish those goals this is especially important for like a new organization or a new team that is spun up based on you Know a new initiative that the business is taking on um and then like talking to the team talking to peers and really understanding like what's work what's or what's working and what's Not so you can identify where process improvements are necessary because again the last thing you want to do is change a bunch of stuff for the sake of changing it and be like, I've made My mark and everything's going to be better now. After that, then it's really focused on like building influence wherever you can. So why don't you kind of kick this off? Kick this one off. Kelly Vaughn What is influence? What is influence? I need chat GPpt at this point i guess yeah that's a really good question it's not something i've actually thought about i guess it's the ability to i don't know how would you define influence Emma Bostian Actually i actually i asked this in my course which is why i wanted to to ask you. It wasn't a trick question or anything, but like I actually ask everybody who takes my leadership course, like what, how would you define influence? Like what comes to mind when you think about somebody who is influential? Really have anything to do with your job title, although you do have some built-in influence as a matter of being like a manager or somebody who's more senior. But it's your ability to make impact in whichever way makes the most sense for your role at your company and for those who you have to interact with on the day-to basis. It's those who say like, okay, if I know that, you know, if I need, if I have a very specific problem that needs solving, Kelly knows how to work this through, even if it's outside of her Like domain expertise. I'm not saying like there's this very specific react bug. I'm saying that this project is going off the rails and it has nothing to do with engineering. But Kelly's good at understanding how to get a project back on track. So let's bring her in. You're having influence outside of your individual domain of expertise. And as you become a manager, as you move into a managerial role, even within engineering, that your scope of influence is going to change over time as well. At first, you are looking to make sure your job is to make sure your team is delivering against the roadmap at a high quality and on schedule. That's going to evolve over time of like building those relationships and understanding that you have a high level of trust. ([Time 0:25:07](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f7a55b93-985b-4360-b8ec-6abe0705598b)) - **Don't Propose Big Tech Moves Early** - Avoid proposing massive infrastructure changes early without deep context. - Spend the first 30 days learning before recommending platform migrations or big technical shifts. Transcript: Emma Bostian Trying to do too much at the outside is probably number one it's the biggest one i see um i i remember a conversation that i was having with somebody who was starting a new role um and they Were trying to like really make a difference and you know show again like that this was a good decision to hire me and so they were like i'm going to come in with so many suggestions and on Day two they suggested that they move from gcp to aws There's no way in 24 hours you have figured out that there is a fundamental issue on a cloud platform that's going to require them move From one platform to another. There's just no possible way you know you do not have enough information there. ([Time 0:31:15](https://share.snipd.com/snip/20fb9f0a-494d-40d9-97e2-7c59936ec416)) - **Explain Status Checks To Avoid Micromanaging** - Avoid micromanaging; set intentions and explain why you check status. - Ask direct reports to call you out if your behavior feels like micromanagement. Transcript: Emma Bostian Like this is the whole point of like spending your first 30 days learning as much as possible because there's no way you can if i were to ask you why you're not going to be able to really dive Deep into like the business use case for that you'd be able to say perhaps like well i have a lot more experience with aws and i know it'll work better but like cool that's about you that's Not about the business that's number one um number two i would say is getting a little micromanaging at first um this doesn't happen so much if you're joining a new company because you're Still establishing trust with people but it can definitely come through if you're taking over a team that you were previously an engineer like an ic on um and you become a manager of that Team because you're suddenly like oh well i had the influence with them and now i have the authority because i'm their manager and so i'm going to now change the way they work and i'm going To like change their process because i this has bothered me all this time and i know it's an issue on our team and now i can do something about it people generally don't like to be micromanaged Um the only time i like to be micromanaged is when I'm doing like a Lego set, which is like, now you take this piece and you connect it with this piece. Other than that, I don't want to be micromanaged. I'm good at my job. And typically, I feel like most people are good at their job with, you know, some gentle nudges here and there and make sure they're working on the right thing. And perhaps in the right manner, if it's like a very vague project but most of the time people don't want to be micromanaged yeah ([Time 0:32:04](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c1add3c5-aa91-478d-b8d8-8a255b25f640)) - **Validate Signals Before Acting** - Not everything that looks urgent is an emergency; investigate context before acting. - Validate signals (like survey results) and seek clarifying information to avoid wasted work. Transcript: Kelly Vaughn So I guess that's a good point. Micromanagement means something different to everybody in every team. So it's better just to have that conversation. Yeah. For me, I think it's more about my team cares more like I don't come in and tell them how to do their jobs. But I do come in and ensure that they feel supported, that they have what they need that I understand what the blockers are or whatever and then sometimes they'll even come and ask for Me to step in at some point and I'm like okay that's awesome happy to do it yep um on my side I have two uh the first would be neglecting the cultural aspect of being a manager and only focusing On the technical side of what's working what's not working um the cultural aspect is i almost want to argue more important because if you don't have psychological safety and trust you're Not going to be performing to the highest ability as a team um so understanding the cultural differences in your team members or like, um, are, is there any friction anywhere? Um, do people feel safe, et cetera, is very important. Um, the second thing is that not everything needs addressing and not everything is an emergency. Um, so if, uh, I've told this story before, but like we do health checks every six months to see how people are feeling on the team in regards to many aspects like psychological safety, Inclusiveness, many different areas, technical debt, work-life balance, etc. So it's all anonymous. People basically give it like a green, yellow, red traffic light rating. Red means like, oh, heck no, like this is not working for me. Green is like, yeah, everything's good. Yellow is meh. I don't know. We should talk about it. And they can leave comments. But someone had left a red on psychological safety, which superficially seems like it's a huge problem. And I would argue that it is. However, I failed to take into consideration the other aspects of this. The other aspects where I had left the anonymous survey open to anybody in the channel, which meant that anybody could go fill it out, any of the 42 people in the channel. And I only have seven engineers. So the math was not mathing. Come to find out, it ended up being somebody who was not part of my engineering team. It was someone that we worked tangentially with. They ended up having a problem with another team member who was also not an engineer. So their red rating, it was almost, and it happened like six months prior. So it was not relevant to the discussion that was being had. The goal of this survey is for me and my engineers to discuss how we're doing. So that was a circumstance unforeseen. However, I had somebody come to me on the team and said, I've never seen a red in this area. We need to do something about it right now. So me being a new manager, I'm like, yeah, of course we do. Like people aren't feeling safe. So I scheduled an hour long workshop with everybody on the team, engineer wise, to establish trust and psychological safety only to find out everybody on the team feels great. They all trust each other. Psychological safety is not a problem. So it was an hour wasted for seven engineers. So seven hours of engineering time. So my point being, not everything is the emergency. It might seem face value, and it's much better to sit and evaluate. ([Time 0:37:11](https://share.snipd.com/snip/75e53e88-fafd-4b52-9792-3b29c85a7f4a)) - **Use Compassion, Not Empathy, As A Manager** - Practice compassion instead of absorbing every team emotion as your own. - Maintain boundaries so you can support people without taking on their problems. Transcript: Kelly Vaughn A lesson I learned pretty quickly as somebody who feels very deeply and is very emotional is that as a manager, you're going to struggle with this. And there is a difference between empathy and compassion. Empathy being you sit with them in their emotions and almost absorb some of them, from what I understand. And that is not necessarily the best way to do it. Compassion is like, hey, I'm with you. I see what you're going through. It's really tough. I'm here for you. But you don't take on their difficulties as your own. You're still able to maintain that boundary and that was an important lesson i had to learn and i learned that um from your or it reminded me of that when you said like not uh what did you Say like everything's a crisis that was me in the gillie and like everything's a crisis i'm sitting with all these people and their emotions and then i'm like but i don't have to i can still Be there for them. Emma Bostian Yes. Not to mention some of these crises are like genuinely just like they're fires that exist. Nationally, like you're going to have to let a fire burn because it's not a huge fire. But there are other more important fires that require your attention. ([Time 0:41:53](https://share.snipd.com/snip/52029c32-38d3-435b-81e1-764113b58689)) - **Read 'The First 90 Days'** - Read The First 90 Days for structured onboarding guidance when starting a new role. - Use it as a practical reset to plan your early actions and mindset. Transcript: Emma Bostian It's a book called The First 90 Days by Michael D. Watkins. Walks you through a lot of the a lot of the similar things that we discussed today. Qualms with the book that is not you know perfect not that i would expect any book to be perfect um but if you're starting a new job moving into a new role changing teams i think it's always A good refresher just to remember like kind of again like that reset of like okay starting like this is an opportunity for a fresh start how am i going to approach this yeah definitely Kelly Vaughn Has some good practical advice out of that one. One of the nonfiction books I really enjoy from an author I really enjoy is called Think Again by Adam Grant, where he basically challenges you to spend a lot of time rethinking things Or as much time rethinking things you believe as well as thinking about things for the first time. So always challenging your own assumptions and beliefs. Emma Bostian That one has been on my bookshelf for a very long time and I need to actually read it. Kelly Vaughn Yeah, I really liked it. It was a good one to know. ([Time 0:43:09](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5f994c64-fc0d-4b87-a2a6-ac468a0b87cc))