What inspires you at work?

Eye-opening beginnings of an engineering manager

"I’ve always dreamed of being an executive" she opened our first date a few months back at a live music bar in New York. "At least she did not ask me to sign an NDA and try to recruit me" I thought to myself playing along genuinely trying to understand her better. Perhaps due to upbringing or my technical background, the idea of "feeling the corporate power or having round-the-clock global impact" failed to appeal to me despite her hard sell. Instead, my imagination had already been captured a while back in Jan 2007 when I saw the original iPhone announcement keynote and the magic of Steve Jobs.

What is your change?

In pursuit of learning new yet uncomfortable things, however, I took a leap of faith and switched to an Engineering Manager role earlier this year. It was an opportunity for me to confront the other side with my previous perception as an IC. Truth be told, it was shattered with the first insight I received. According to many, a significant part of the role of an exec is their inspirational impact on hiring for larger organizations. After all, as a manager you may structure the organization in a certain way but it only works if the quality of human capital is there. You need both star players to get things done despite frictions and others to steadily move the ship forward.

What is your drive?

Being a primarily project driven person, I learnt that there are, to my utmost surprise, more people driven by their personal ties and experience with the management chain. In other words, they would choose to work for a person in their network they trust rather than switch for the product that was more exciting to them. Although seemingly trivial, I realized how important it is to the hiring process. Best people require a tailored message to their motivations to jump the ship especially the more senior and experienced they are.

It’s the team quality, stupid!

Despite initial difficulties, it is actually extremely rewarding and exciting to push yourself in a new direction and learn something new from scratch. It does not happen often that you get that opportunity, but given how rare those are one needs to grab them whenever they happen. I have been grateful to have had a constant flurry of heightened professional stimulation since 2022. In the meantime, I will happily sail into the unknown of hiring, managing and vision setting, but with the ultimate goal of building a great team and thus product. At the end of the day, you can only do as much as one person but as a team you can move mountains.

Off we go towards uncharted waters!