Joining a new company as a manager
August 25, 2019 8:16 PM   Subscribe

I am joining a new company as a software engineering manager and this is my first time being hired directly into a leadership role. What should I do to make sure I get off to a good start with my new team?

My previous management experience comes from advancing within a team where I started as an individual contributor, so I was already familiar with the company culture, product, team members, etc. This time, everything here is novel to me and I won't have a base of established knowledge and relationships to build on.

What should I be paying special attention to? What hazards should I be looking out for?
posted by 4rtemis to Work & Money (10 answers total) 16 users marked this as a favorite
 
I’m a tech manager but like you I graduated up. However I’ve seen newly hired managers. In no particular order:
- get in with your boss and get to know his or her mandate — do they want you to clean up, stay the course, grow the team etc. watch what their goals are.
- get to know your team. Meet with each person “if you were to waive a magic want what would change?” Find out their personal goals, how they see other department etc.
- get to know other departments, make friends with those managers, keep an eye on the key players there. Your peer group can grow you or tank you.
- for gods sake don’t get in there changing things right away, sit back and learn for the first several months. Learn from your team, have them coach you on their projects and products. Take on a small project if you can to learn the ropes.
- for gods sake don’t be obviously ambitious to move up; it’s gross and transparent.
- your team is your greatest resource so job #1 is to earn their trust
posted by St. Peepsburg at 9:07 PM on August 25, 2019 [14 favorites]


I'd echo @St. Peepsburg's advice. Meet with your boss early about their expectations of the role and asking them what success in the role looks like, but I'd also make it clear that you're going to spend the first several weeks meeting with people and listening. Meet with each of your team individually for decent chunks of time. Meet with peers and other stakeholders. The first phase is often about trust-building and diagnosing problems as much as anything.
posted by tinlids at 10:00 PM on August 25, 2019 [4 favorites]


You should check out the excellent responses seen in this previous AskMe.
posted by yes I said yes I will Yes at 3:08 AM on August 26, 2019


Agree with St. Peepsburg. The first thing you should do is find out your goals, learn about the company and your team, and establish a relationship with people early on. I would add, after talking to your manager, start documenting things - put together a 30/60/90 day plan. And the first 30-60 days should be about learning the ropes and understanding the team.

One thing I'd recommend on top of that - be as transparent as possible with your team and the rest of the company about what you're doing. At my $dayjob there are a number of teams that send out status updates about the work they're doing, which raises their visibility and gives you an opportunity to put the spotlight on your team. (Note, I personally hate doing this sort of thing, but I'm currently a team of one and it feels too much like "justify your job" work. But it can be very effective.)
posted by jzb at 4:09 AM on August 26, 2019


Although St Peepsburg’s advice to not change anything right away is great, I’d still keep (private) notes from the very start about things you think need to change. You might later think some/all of these are wrong, but you can very quickly come to think that odd ways of doing things are normal - the kind of things long-term employees will describe as “well, it’s just always been done that way”. Unless you note them with fresh eyes, you might overlook them by the time you feel able to make changes.
posted by fabius at 6:00 AM on August 26, 2019 [4 favorites]


Donuts. I mean, it’s silly, but managers I’ve had who brought food early in their tenure, it came across as concern for how their team was perceiving the relationship and an intention for it to be positive.
posted by LizardBreath at 8:24 AM on August 26, 2019 [4 favorites]


As a tech manager, you have the opportunity to make the industry better for women and minorities. Hire them. Mentor them. Regularly assess diversity. Talk to people who about how well the department and the company as a whole treats women and minorities, and what improvements could be made. Solicit anonymous feedback as well. Listen. Implement as you are able. Read about diversity, beyond just the pipeline problem.


Source: female former programmer who could not take the unrelenting and unacknowledged sexism anymore.
posted by nirblegee at 10:40 AM on August 26, 2019 [3 favorites]


You might find this and this and this helpful, all from Ask a Manager.
posted by SisterHavana at 5:30 PM on August 26, 2019


Excellent advice above.

Five things to add from my journey to upper management:
1. Don't put on airs. Everyone is a middle manager, even the C Suite. Being grounded cultivates trust.

2. Trust is everything. Make promises carefully, and keep them. Explain to your team when you can't. Always choose the option that is in the best interests of the organization, not your own career. People can and will analyze your actions and follow through and judge you accordingly.

3. Ask for help and use it. This was the biggest challenge for me. Individual contributors are expected to shine on their own (while being a good team player). It gets you used to thinking that you can tackle a project by yourself. The higher you go, the more money and people are involved, this is never going to be the case again. I just started a new job in the middle of a significant financial project. There is no way to fix the problems or do the work myself. I don't have the expertise or time. But we have pulled together a team of people with different expertises, workloads, and personalities. It's not my job to deliver the results personally, it's my job to herd and cheerlead and cajole this team to delivery. So make sure your victory conditions in your head match your reality.

4. Document all your successes and challenges. I keep an ongoing portfolio of accomplishments for performance reviews, but it helps to review it when I'm feeling slow or overwhelmed.

5. Believe in yourself. You got the job, you're capable of doing great things. Be the kind of manager, coworker, and employee that you want to have. Think hard, don't rush choices, accept setbacks, and keep using your resources. You'll be fantastic.
posted by skookumsaurus rex at 5:10 AM on August 30, 2019 [1 favorite]


Best answer: The hardest part of this is likely to be that you have to learn how to manage a team where you don't understand all of the ins and outs of the technology already. When you grow into management of a team that you previously worked on, you have a huge advantage in time management: you don't have to spend a ton of time figuring out the details of the actual technology because you know it. Coming in as a new manager, you won't have that advantage.

Many great first-line engineering managers rely on the fact that they have strong understanding of the technology that the team is building and can help them make good decisions using that understanding. That is also a shortcut to developing trust with the team by having known technical prowess.

The best newly-hired first-line managers I've seen have managed to do a couple of things. First, they don't pretend to understand the technology better than the team they are managing. They come in open-minded and ask a lot of questions to start to learn and understand the systems. But then, they take the initiative to show to the team that they possess adequate technical judgment in general. You should figure out what that looks like for you. It might come through some design feedback, or helping the team during an outage. It might come in taking on a small technical task yourself. Just don't fall into the trap of thinking that you need to understand every detail of the system at hand to do your job well.

Second, they don't change everything at once, but they do take advantage of their newness to change some things for the better. I cannot disagree more strongly with the idea that a new manager shouldn't change anything for months. You absolutely should listen and spend time getting to know things before making drastic changes, but I would bet that there will be something glaringly obvious the minute you join that just doesn't make sense. Particularly when that thing is a matter of process that is wholly-owned by the team at hand, you should feel ok changing it. Great new managers make things better for their teams immediately. Look, if you have the rare situation where you're coming in over an incredibly productive gelled team, maybe you don't need to worry about this step. But given the rarity of those teams it's more likely you're coming in over a team that does some things well and some things poorly, that is missing focus on something important, or that has a cultural problem that needs to be addressed. Take your grace period, pick something that is within your complete control to change that you feel confident has a high probability of good outcomes and that is not completely contrary to the team's existing culture, and change it!

As a manager of (software engineering) managers, I generally expect a new manager to cause positive changes on the team and the best new managers show improvements within the first 60-90 days. Talk to your new manager and figure out what they think is going well and what isn't with the team. If they just want you to keep things going, then ignore my advice to change things, but otherwise don't be shy to do your job.
posted by ch1x0r at 10:03 AM on August 31, 2019 [1 favorite]


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