Nothing prepares you for new parenthood.
Oh, sure. You can read books on the subject. Watch videos on youtube. Get advice from family or friends.
It doesn’t matter.
Nothing prepares you for new parenthood.
Except for experience.
I found the same to be true of people management.
One day, you become a first-time people manager. It goes like this: Congrats! You’ve been promoted. Now, start managing people. What’s that? You expect a blueprint to guide you? Tough luck. You’re on your own!
Just like new parenthood.
Dive right in.
Sink or swim.
At the very least, float. Keep your head above the currents.
In 2025, I reached a milestone in my career, marking my 10th year in a people management role. I also changed jobs for the first time in a long time. The confluence of those two events got me to thinking, reflecting upon my career as a people leader.
I publish this blog to help engineers become better people managers. Reflecting upon my anniversary inspired me to share lessons I’ve learned in people management throughout my career. Learning these lessons will help you to survive and thrive:
Be aware of politics
Don’t get caught up in politics. Do develop an awareness of the politics of your workplace. Learn the lay of the leadership land. Get to know your peers. Pay attention to the leaders above you on the food chain. Consider how your actions and decisions may affect leaders across the organization. Your job is to deliver. You need to figure out the nuances of collaborating with other leaders to get things done.
Data only tells part of the story
“I’m a data-driven insert_your_job_title_here.” Sounds important. Kinda smart. It must be, otherwise, you wouldn’t see this declaration repeated ad infinitum on LinkedIn profiles! Seriously, data should drive decisions, but not exclusively. To be a well-rounded leader, look at the whole picture. Don’t forget: People are an important part of the story. Data says your team is lagging in some metric? Check the wellbeing of your team. The answers may be there.
Trust your gut
You’re walking down the street at night. Something doesn’t feel right. You feel a sense of danger. Instead of ruminating, you take action, like ducking into a bodega. The sense of danger passes. So does the menacing guy who was following you down that dark street. Trust your gut as a leader. If things don’t feel right, take action and investigate. Remember: It’s not all about the data. Humans have super powers. Use them.
Everybody has a ceiling
Unlimited growth is a myth. People can and do grow. We also have our limitations. That goes for our team members and ourselves. Don’t stress if a team member doesn’t climb to the top of the mountain. The same goes for you. Be proud of your abilities and accomplishments. There are many ways to grow that don’t involve climbing to the top. Seek them out.
Steady is okay (and valuable)
Teams have varying levels of performers, ranging in talent from outstanding to mediocre. Lots of steady performers in the middle. These are the team members who get the job done with little fanfare. On occasion, they exceed expectations. Many steady performers have little interest in career advancement. That’s okay. Don’t fret about it. Learn to value their contributions.
Performance Improvement Plans are hellish
Managing a PIP is like running a marathon through a desert. Expect to spend countless hours on coaching, meetings and documentation. Those hours are costly, subtracting time from your busy schedule. If you care about people, you’ll feel the emotional toil, particularly if the under-performer doesn’t improve. Ponder over this postmortem question after the PIP: Why did this team member end up on a PIP?
People don’t like to read
Everybody values documentation, except their actions tell a different story. You spend hours on the Wiki writing up SOPs, best practices, policies, etc. You announce the pages to the world. Then you check page analytics in Confluence. And nobody came to the Wiki page party! Frustrating, but no reason to give up on documentation. Keep your docs concise. Refrain from walls of text and fluff. Get to the point. Make your docs worth reading.
Nobody likes to manage tickets
We track issues and work requests in tickets. We do, but we don’t. Huh? Well, we’re supposed to track our work in tickets. Truth is, most engineers don’t like to manage tickets. Because, well, engineers want to do engineering stuff, not open, update and close tickets. I have an idea. To incentivize ticket management, let’s rebrand tickets as stocks. I bet you won’t have to nag people to manage their portfolios!
Ticket backlog is oblivion
Lackadaisical ticket management leads to the dreaded backlog. Think of each ticket in the backlog as a tile. Connect all of those tiles in a line and you can walk from Earth to Pluto. But wait. You come up with a system, sprint or some other herculean initiative to solve the backlog problem, and what happens? You temporarily shorten that walkway to Neptune. But it may reach Pluto again one day. Because oblivion.
Tactical mistakes shouldn’t derail strategy
Let’s say you develop a strategy to grow your team. Your plan includes hiring, cross-training and promotions. Reality comes knocking on the door. Hiring is going slow. You can’t find time to cross-train people. There’s no budget for promotions. This is not the time to shelf your strategy. You need to adapt. Change and update your tactics to overcome the inevitable obstacles that sidetrack strategy.
Quiet can be ominous
Wow. Things are so quiet. Isn’t it great? Work seems to be getting done. You haven’t had any incidents in awhile. The team seems to be doing well. Enjoy the quiet, but be wary. Quiet isn’t always good. Blind spots and landmines have a way of turning quiet into chaos. Use the quiet time to uncover any gaps within your engineering operations.
Ambiguity is reality
You got promoted to manager. As an engineer, you used logic to solve problems. Welcome to the illogical world of people management! You’ll learn about the many ambiguities of the workplace. People say one thing, but mean another. Projects have vague goals or outcomes. You need to develop skills to navigate ambiguity, translating doubt and uncertainty into a clear path forward.
M&A integrations are demanding
Or brutal. It depends. Definitely demanding. As a leader with the acquired company, you’re responsible for integrating people, processes and systems into the acquiring company while maintaining your current operations. You also have to deal with a new work culture and adapt to the styles of new leadership. Plus, you don’t know if you or your team will have jobs after the integration settles down. Yes, brutal.
Conflicts need attention ASAP
Sound familiar? Two team members don’t seem to get along. It’s not that bad. You’ve seen worse. Things will work themselves out. One day, the conflict blows up. Don’t wait until one day. Remember that trust your gut lesson? When you get a hint of a burgeoning conflict, step in. Do right by your team.
Be wary of third party vendors
A friend of a friend once had a third party software vendor offer them a complimentary health check of their systems. Generous of the vendor. Right? That free health check turned out to be a backdoor audit of their software license. Not cool. Look. Most software vendors are okay. I’m a strong advocate of building solid partnerships with vendors. Be vigilant though. Ploys like this do happen.
Empathy provides perspective
Your team member made a costly mistake. Maybe they caused an outage. Some leaders will rush to blame. Or jump to conclusions. Good leaders have empathy. In this case, a follow-up conversation reveals that the team member was feeling burned out and missed a deployment step. Now that you have a better understanding of the cause behind the operational lapse, you can dig into the causes of the burnout and improve the management of the team’s workload.
Poor communication causes most problems
Teams are operating in silos. The leader of Team A is launching a major project. The project has dependencies on Team C and Team D. How are the leaders of Team C and D supposed to allocate time and resources to a surprise project? Or a team member has been working on a production issue, but hasn’t been tracking the issue in a ticket. Not great for visibility or handover. If there’s a problem with your operations, poor communication is the probable culprit.
Alliances are necessary
New to being a people manager? You can’t succeed alone. As an individual contributor, you became accustomed to getting your work done and calling it a day. In your new role, you need to develop alliances with leaders across the business. The equity from these relationships is influence. Influence will make a big difference in your ability to get things done.
Resilience is the key
This is the most important lesson of all. I’ve survived 10 years of people management by being resilient, learning to adapt and grow through chaos and change. I’ve celebrated the wins. Just as important, I’ve bounced back from misfortune. Like the funky T-Shirt says: Not everything has to make sense. In reality, not everything will make sense. Hang in there. Keep trying. Everything will be OK.
