🥳 happy new year I am planning to slowly move to management track this year. Those who moved from IC to management, what trainings, coaching from mentors, coursera courses or books found useful and impactful for your career. Do you have mentors like your old managers etc? Or are you guys just learning mainly from day to day work? Tc 460k
Those does not matters. Are you Indian? If so make sure you only hire Indians, specifically visa holders. This is the easiest and fastest way to establish power and influence over ur team
I hoping in the near term this industry will be turned on its head
By the time that you want to move you find yourself being run through by the folks who are already managers for many years and the garbage recruiters and HRBPs only value (they have been manager for x number of years) bullsh!t … When I did it it was all battling with corporate !d!ots specially boomer HRBPs whose mindset stink similar to their bodies … then it was nothing but politics and my peers when I was IC were all trying to drag me and then the tenured managers who were struggling to battle with new and fresh peer and justify their expensive existence turned the whole experience as a nightmare… the higher I went up … (now a VP) it became more fierce to a degree that I either eat or get eaten … Make sure you are aware of what you are signing up for. Life is hard after this
Moved from executive to Distinguished engineer and cant be happier. Dont be a people leader just to have “manager” in your title.
That's an anomaly. You'll very soon hit the ceiling in IC track. Get that EM title, it'll open up more doors in the future.
been there done that. I have more flexibility and dont bother about promotion(grade change). Focus is only on work/impact. And ample of time to enjoy life
No mentors really. But I wish someone told me as a new manager that I should... 1. Spend least 20% of my day-to-day in building a network, a very strong network, of customers, partners, peers, and the less experienced peers, who'd vouch for me almost unequivocally 2. Socializing my vision with each and every leader, irrespective of their stakes in my vision 3. Maximize productivity of the team and invent ways to give them back time to invest on new inventions. And only then delegate the work to the reports. Assuming you could share workload while the shit is still shit, is first step towards a cumulative burnout
Nice! Network of customers? How do u do that?
Sorry, I meant the direct customers of your team, not the end-customers. For example, I was a DE manager. My customers were BI teams and Data Scientists,and also in many cases, business and product teams. I can imagine if you're building a product that directly reaches end-customers, my "network of customers" doesn't really apply to you.
At Tinder, they usually put some immature IC, who decided to be an EM. It’s not a promotion. They just give them a new title and a bunch of new responsibilities. Usually either EM 2, or Sr. EM will oversee recent EM and tell them what to do. Recent EMa in most cases have no clue how to resolve any issues, and just go to their manager to ask what to do.
The managers I’ve had who read management books are the worst ones. It’s ok to read one or two, but don’t blindly follow fluffy advice. The best managers are empathetic, authentic, hard working, technically sound, and good with handling people at all levels. Of course, these are not the ones who necessarily get promoted up the ladder.
Who are the ones who get promoted?
Smart but technically so-so, cut-throat, great at managing up but kinda meh to peers and reports.
Clearly you want to manage people. First step is to find a mentor who has done that for the last decade successfully and is recognized by leadership as an effective manager.
Senior enough IC usually have some capacity of managerial task and eventually transfer to management at other companies.
Most unhelpful answer. “Be senior enough and good luck with your blind side"
Senior ICs also need sponsor EMs to push their ideas. You can't be successful without directors or EMs championing you.