As a new manager, I found it useful to start each performance review season by rereading! Which also means it’s an excellent time to reread Camille Fournier’s “How Do Individual Contributors Get Stuck?”10 Over time, I found myself wanting a manager-centric version, and eventually that desire solidified into the following list. Following in Fournier’s tradition, I was thinking about the parallels for engineering managers. Managers work more indirectly, so when we get stuck it isn’t always quite as obvious, but we absolutely do get stuck, both on individual projects and in our careers.
