Metadata
- Author: benkuhn.net
- Full Title:: Some Mistakes I Made as a New Manager
- Category:: 🗞️Articles
- Document Tags:: Engineering Management at Gitlab Engineering Management at Gitlab
- URL:: https://www.benkuhn.net/newmgr/
- Finished date:: 2023-04-25
Highlights
The trough of zero dopamine The first thing I noticed about being a manager was that I wasn’t sure whether anything I was doing was useful. (View Highlight)
built up other sources of fun and validation. For a long time, my work was the primary thing that helped me feel good about myself. Diversifying that to include more of friends, relationships, hobbies, Twitter likes, etc. smoothed out the ups and downs. (View Highlight)
Eventually, I decided that I’d only allow myself to work on programming projects if nobody else cared when they shipped (View Highlight)
If I had spare time after getting through my more important management work, I could pick up one of those projects, but if I had a busy week and had to put it on hold, nothing bad would happen. (View Highlight)
There was always enough time-sensitive work for three of me. That meant that I’d “postpone” the managerial equivalent of maintenance over and over: • Helping people think through their long-term career trajectory • Giving tough feedback or having difficult conversations • Paying down technical debt • Thinking about where my team needed to be in six months • Getting an early start on projects with long lead times (View Highlight)
Eventually I realized that I needed to have slack by default (View Highlight)