The Manager's Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change

by Camille Fournier

Good Manager, Bad Manager: The Alpha Geek

Don’t hire interns who are not going to graduate in the year after their internship. These days, college graduates from technical programs have so many options, and it’s unlikely that an intern you hire who is not close to graduation is going to come back and work for you full-time. Your internship program is not a way for you to get extra work done in the summer; it’s a way for you to identify and attract talent.

what is a tech lead? Here is the description we created at Rent the Runway: The tech lead role is not a point on the ladder, but a set of responsibilities that any engineer may take on once they reach the senior level. This role may or may not include people management, but if it does, the tech lead is expected to manage these team members to the high management standards of RTR tech. These standards include: Regular (weekly) 1-1 touchbases Regular feedback on career growth, progression towards goals, areas for improvement, and praise as warranted Working with reports to identify areas for learning and helping them grow in these areas via project work, external learning, or additional mentoring If a tech lead is not managing directly, they are still expected to provide mentorship and guidance to the other members of the team. The tech lead is learning how to be a strong technical project manager, and as such, they are scaling themselves by delegating work effectively without micromanaging. They focus on the whole team’s productivity and strive to increase the impact of the team’s work product. They are empowered to make independent decisions for the team and are learning how to handle difficult management and leadership situations. They are also learning how to partner effectively with product, analytics, and other areas of the business. It is not required that an engineer work as a tech lead to progress, but it is the most common way for engineers to grow from senior engi...

For more ideas, see Lara Hogan’s excellent blog post on the topic.

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The best way to avoid brilliant jerk syndrome is to simply not hire one. Once they’re hired, getting rid of brilliant jerks takes a level of management confidence that I think is uncommon. Fortunately, these folks will often get rid of themselves, because even though you may not have the guts to fire them, it’s unlikely that you’ll be stupid enough to promote them. Right? Let’s hope so.

The only way to achieve these goals is to cut scope at the end of the project.

The popular doubling rule of software estimation is, “Whenever asked for an estimate, take your guess and double it.” This rule is appropriate and good to use when you’re asked for an off-the-cuff guess.

There are many things that feel urgent that aren’t. The whole of the internet, for example.

But to create this environment, she sometimes must say no. She must say no to the team. She must say no to her peers. She must even say no to her boss.

Perhaps you are dealing with an engineer who wants to switch to a new programming language for a project, one that your team doesn’t use. He has some great arguments as to why this language is the perfect tool for the job, but you’re reluctant to add a new tool just because it’s perfect.

To that end, there are two areas I encourage you to practice modeling, right now: figuring out what’s important, and going home.

If the team works 60 hours in a week to deliver something that otherwise would’ve taken a week and a half, they haven’t worked faster, they’ve just given the company more of their free time.

Pretending to lack structure tends to create hidden power structures resulting from the nature of human communication and the challenges of trying to scale that communication.

John Gall’s book Systemantics:1 A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system.

Writing a Career Ladder

Conway’s Law is often cited in discussions of this kind of structure. It states: “Organizations which design systems…are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations.”