An elegant puzzle: CH 1+2: May 4th

[elle]

Current book is An Elegant Puzzle by Will Larson (Amazon).
Aiming to read/discuss:

• Chapter 1: Intro
• Chapter 2: Organizations

MC: @JohnTelfer
Notes: @elle

See you 12 pm Tuesday, May 4th @ https://blackmill.co/meet

Ping gday@blackmill.co if you want a calendar invite and access to the low-volume Slack beforehand.

[elle]

An Elegant Puzzle

Intro

• People don't leave companies, they leave managers
• Many IC engineers usually get into management with a "sink of swim" approach, without much of mentoring
• This is the reason Blackmill exists
• Can lead to confirmation bias: without real training, and company is doing alright, then I as the manager must be doing something right
• Without training, it takes longer to become a good manager
• Research shows that leaders are better with training - all discussion of born vs made leaders, even when considering that some personality traits are possibly more conductive to leadership.
• Dabbling in both engineering and management is really going nowhere??. Try not to think of management as a vertical promotion. As a manager, you might miss engineering experiences, because you should focus on your people. Once you have many responsibilities, you don't have time to be on the tools as much. But you can jump between the two. This is similar to diving deeply into a part of the stack rather than trying to know all the stack.
• It is easier to see the value you bring to the company when you are a contributor. But it is less tangible when you're a manager.
• On topic: https://charity.wtf/2020/09/06/if-management-isnt-a-promotion-then-engineering-isnt-a-demotion/
• Choosing to be a manager is not necessarily a limiting career option, because there are fewer staff and principal engineers around as well. But the question is: what would you like to achieve? is it a title? money? or being challenged at work? how much money do you need before having so much disposable income? What are you looking for?

Organisations

When I have a problem that I want to solve quickly and cheaply, I start thinking about process design. A problem I want to solve permanently and we have time to go slow? That’s a good time to evolve your culture. However, if process is too weak a force, and culture too slow, then organizational design lives between those two.

• Sizing teams:
  • Ideal size: 6-8 people max. Not less, not more.
  • Talks a lot on hyper-growth. As a manager you rarely have control on team sizes, you just inherit the team that there is.
  • Fresho aims for 6 people teams, with own responsibilities for parts of the app. Team structure is starting to look and be aligned with the business structure.
• Four states of a team:
  • Falling behind -> add people
  • Treading water -> reduce WIP
  • Repaying debt -> add time
  • Innovating -> add slack
• Only hire on one team at a time because it takes teams time to gell
• Falling behind - backlog is longer every week, which is a planning problem, but instead of giving people small win, he advocates for "adding people", But he does not address that it takes people around 6 months to ramp up and be productive.
• Also these solutions might work when the startup is funded and profitable
• Launder accountability via a re-org!! when people don't want to take responsibility and they push it aside with a re-org.
• All these solutions take time and are slow.
• Freso believes in snail pace that is sustainable for the long term. There are no quick wins. And are ok to delete cards because if they are truly a problem, they will surface up again. Steady pace and quality code rather than shortcuts.
• Senior engineers time is tied up with interviews, or training others, or mentoring that really their utilisation is a lot lower than 100% of senior engineer time
• Succession planning:
  • Look at your calendar for meetings
  • Look at your calendar again for for irregular things - like interviews
  • Look for things that happen on a wider cycle: for example performance reviews every x-months
  • Consider each report you support and how
  • Audit emails and chats for incoming enquiries
  • Scan your ongoing todo list for tasks
  • Think about external relationships that are important in your current role
  • Then look at the above and close the gaps, by either writing documentation, or delegating to others.