From Software Engineer to Engineering Manager with Michael Doye

Hi everyone, my name is Patrick Akio and if you're interested in moving from software engineer to Engineering Manager like me, this episode is for you. Joining me today is Michael Doy. He's Director of Engineering at Mobiquity and I love his perspective on balancing people, business and engineering responsibilities. I'll put all his socials in the description below, check him out. And with that being said, enjoy the episode beyond coding BBQ a

lot still. Yeah, I mean, as a South African. We call them bries, yeah. And it's like embedded in our culture. So when I moved into the apartment I'm in now, one of the first things I bought was a BBQ so that I could bry and you have a terrace like you can do it. Yeah, I've got like a rooftop terrace. Beautiful. Yeah, it's quite nice and it's quite high up. Nice view of the water and stuff.

So I have a few colleagues from South Africa and they were like, OK, we're gonna do a BRY for the whole unit. Yeah, and I really enjoyed it. But they were like never again because there was like 50 people in there like cooking. Yeah, we convinced our company as well to buy like a gas BBQ to put outside and every like at least one Friday a month. We do. We bry hamburgers for the for the company. Nice. And it's also a huge pain in the Oscars. There's a lot of people. Yeah, right.

And you have to stand there in the heat for like 50-40 minutes brying these burgers. Yeah, but yeah, it's always worth it though. It's good food. Like, I really enjoyed that night. But I could see them. They were like cooking the whole time, people giving them praise, and they were like never again. Yeah, yeah. It can be a bit rough, yeah. It was fun. They told me that people in South Africa, I don't know if I should generalize, but they

don't really clean the BBQ. They like, rub an onion on it and then it's like the more you use it, the better it tastes. It adds flavour. That's, and I mean, it gets so hot that it's going to obviously kill any bacteria, that type of shit. But yeah, typically, like, just take an onion after the grill is heated up and rub the shit out of it. That's the thing that's good. That's really funny. You do in winter as well. If the weather is nice enough, but not so much.

I mean, especially, well, not so much here in the Netherlands, because winter's typically a little bit colder, yeah, than South Africa. Significantly colder, actually. So not so much in winter, No, not so much. If it's like a nice sunny day, then yeah, I'll often like, if I get some nice burger patties or something like that, then I'll just go up and put them on the BBQ for like 30 minutes or whatever. Or 20 minutes and no. It doesn't have to be a whole thing.

I don't have to cook, like for 10 people, I'll often just do it for myself. So sounds good. Yeah. But that one Friday, like once a month in the office, you still do that. Are you involved there as well? Yeah, I mean, we have quite a few S Africans working for the company, so we normally sort of rotate the responsibility of cooking the burgers, Yeah. But yeah, last time I did, I burnt my fingers so bad, really. But we haven't done it now. Well. I was on PTO the last time we did it.

So, yeah, I don't know who's in it is next actually. Yeah. And is it, I mean, we talked

previously, there's no back to the office policy yet, right? Well, they they, they are trying to encourage people to come back to the office, but there's no like official policy so to say. But I think it's the same for a lot of companies. They are obviously trying to sort of not necessarily get back to where we were before COVID, but there is you know. At least in my opinion as well, there is sort of a nice vibe when you're all with people in the office and it's often easier

to actually talk to people. You missed those sort of coffee machine chats, you know, like the small little talks in between. It's a good example that happened to me last week. I was trying to reach out to one of my colleagues, sent a message on teams like hey, I need you for 15 minutes, can I schedule something on Monday? And he didn't get back to me. And I went downstairs to the canteen and get some coffee and boom, he was right there.

And I. It took me 5 minutes to get the information that I needed and I also saved saved a meeting the next day on the Monday. So yeah, it all depends. I mean I do see the value in being in the office, but I think for a lot of people it's it's kind of difficult because you have, you know, a lot of people change their lifestyles completely when they when like everyone had to work from home

permanently. For example, people stop sending their kids to daycare and to ask people to switch back like on a dime like that is a little bit challenging. So yeah, I mean, I think any company that tries to enforce working permanently from the office is probably going to face a little bit of backlash. I agree. Because people are not going to want to do it. No. Like so soon after being so

comfortable working from home. Yeah, I wonder like what the lasting impact is gonna because I see the trend that companies are trying to encourage. Like not every company has a policy that's like, OK, you can only work X amount of days from home now. But the encouragement starts and I think it's gonna kind of progress in some companies, but I hope other companies will still kind of offer that

flexibility. But exactly as you say, when people got, like, when COVID happened, people got more flexible in how they did their personal time versus their work time. And even people that became parents during that period have no clue how to now manage. Yeah, exactly. Kind of their kids and daycare and stuff like that. If they have to go back to the office, like it's quite a challenge. Exactly. And I mean, I personally feel like I'm way more productive when I work from home because

there isn't so much distraction. Yeah. You know, if I'm at the office and there's always, it seems like there's always somebody who needs something, you know, there's always someone at the desk. Not always, but more often than not there's someone at the desk asking for something, or they need help with something, and so on. Whereas if you work from home, then it's a little bit more asynchronous. It's like you can reply to a Slack message after an hour.

You don't have to necessarily reply straight away. So, yeah, I like that aspect of it. How's the company encouraging you to come back? Oh, they do a lot of activities in the office, this type of stuff. We had this ping pong tournament last week. Oh, that's dope. That was it was really cool, actually. It was a lot of fun. I didn't take part. I suck at ping pong. Yeah, same here. It was fun. And then we had an air hockey table in this last Friday, which was also really fun.

Again, I sucked at it. But yeah, I mean there's small things like that, you know, like lunches, breakfasts, this type of stuff. So they are definitely trying to encourage people to come back to the office. I think that's the. I think that's the better approach rather than being like you have to come back. Yeah, try and be like, OK, we have this thing and either it could be food or it could be an activity and it's a thing. Show up if you want to. Yeah, exactly.

Make it fun. But also like, how do you

enforce it right? Unless you have some sort of like. Like ID system where you know and someone is tagged in so you know that they are at the office. Yeah. If you don't have that, then you sort of rely on the people managers to micromanage the people to some extent to ensure that they are there in the office, which is, I don't know, it seems pointless and like too much work.

Yeah, Could you do that, you think if there was a company policy that said, OK, every team and they basically toss the managers with make sure your team is at the office? Fuck, it'll be difficult though. It really will be because I mean we have the the company is quite big in the Amsterdam office, so it's going to be like every single people manager is going to be spending the most of the time following up with someone to check if they're in the office and if not why not, blah

blah blah blah. So it's like a full time job basically, yeah. Basically so and I yeah. Personally, I don't think I don't really see it. At least not any time soon. Any company is going back to full, full time work at least in the IT industry. I think other industries maybe a little bit more need for them to be in the office. But for IT, I mean a lot of the work, in fact almost all the work you can do remotely and a lot of our clients for example are based overseas or in the

neighboring European countries. So it's not like we are on site at the offices in any case. So yeah, it makes sense.

It's kind of an interesting thought and I I never thought about it. Has there ever been? Because kind of going back to the office is an interesting policy to discuss, but that hasn't happened yet in your past, has there ever been like a a mandatory policy or something that you didn't agree with but that you did have to kind of follow through on or have you always kind of found middle

ground there? Well, not in the company I work for now, but back in South Africa I was working for this company where we had the Super strict. It was for a period, yeah. We had the Super strict time logging policy, so we had to. It was actually really ridiculous because you had, we used a software called teamwork. I think it was OK. It was years ago and they had a timer functionality where when you start a task, you could start a timer so you could you know how long a task took you.

Yeah. And there was this policy that they enforced, essentially, that made sure. That we had to start that time every time we started a task. OK, to make sure that we logged our eight hours of work a day per task. Yeah, yeah, basically. And then they would follow up, You know, like, we see you only worked 7 1/2 hours on this day. What happened?

Wow. So that was, that was a pain in the ass, Yeah. But were you, were you on the kind of, were you in the IC roles like individual contributor or were you the person that had to like follow through that? A little bit of both. I was the head of development, yeah, there, So. And it was a small team there, so it wasn't super difficult to make sure that people were doing what they were supposed to be doing. But it was kind of ridiculous, to be honest. I mean, nobody liked it.

No. What do you like? You have to pause the time when you get up to take a pee. Yeah, it's a. Little bit ridiculous.

I mean, from my Dutch perspective, it's like that is like not done. Yeah, that was one of the things I really enjoyed about moving and working for a Dutch company. It's super, super flexible. Yeah, there's not a lot of sort of policies that will scare people away, I would say, at least from my experience up to now. Yeah, there's this thing like that. You call it Hazon Fristant, which is like, I don't even know

how to translate that. But it's like, yeah, if it doesn't make sense, it doesn't make sense. Basically, it's like it's not even think for yourself, it's just think. The direct translation is Think healthy. Yeah, I was thinking because I mean Afrikaans is quite similar to that. Yeah. So there's some, you know, you can sort of extrapolate some of the translations through just by knowing some Afrikaans. And yeah, I was. What is the word again? Because on for stomp.

Yeah, yeah. It sounds almost like a stand healthy. Yeah, basically, yeah. And I think a lot of people like it's ingrained in the culture. If it doesn't make sense, people argue it. People were kind of stand their ground and be like why or I'm not gonna do it even. And principally sometimes people say I don't do this, which I think is like I've I've grown up in it. So for me to hear the opposite is weird And I think it would be even weirder to then experience

that. I mean maybe I shouldn't label it as weird. It would just be a a different experience. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, yeah. But I was like I've only worked for one company since Sabenia in the last five years. So I am sort of curious how it works in other companies, but I would imagine it's more or less the same. It seems like a very much a cultural thing.

I think so. It's not so sort of individual to each company, but more just of sort of a globally accepted thing or a regionally accepted thing. Yeah, yeah. I think it's really ingrained in the culture and I don't know it's hard for me to reflect how

it would have been otherwise. Like even growing up in school I I had moments where I stood my ground and be like I don't agree or I would tell the teacher you're wrong and it doesn't make sense and I'm I'm not sure if in another country in other cultures that would like go through and as it did and. If I did that in school in South Africa, I probably would have been sent straight to the principal's office. I mean like, yeah, that's what I hear.

But I'm kind of curious because you you moved from a role of more so individual contributor to more of an engineering manager position. Like how, how was that transition for you? It was relatively smooth I think. So I first started as when I joined the company I'm with now when I moved from South Africa here, yeah, I joined as just an individual contributor, software

engineer. And then I think it was after about six months they asked me to be team lead, so to help manage some of the front end team at that time. Yeah. So I did that I think for, I don't know, a year and a half or so, how was the work distribution? It was more heavily focused on the still on the like just normal software engineering individual contribution side of things.

Yeah. And then you had like 4 to 8 hours, so more or less like one day a week to focus on like the people management side of things. So have you one on ones mentoring, coaching, this type of stuff. And then they there's like a little bit of internal restructuring happened and they opened up three director positions at the company and to

be honest. When I heard that they were opening them up, so they split it across three different groups, basically Foundation, Platform and Applications. And since my experience is mostly around sort of front end full stack application side of things, my manager at the time asked me if I was interested in applying for the Applications director role and initially. I thought to myself, not, not really. You know, I was sort of happy

where I was. I wasn't super interested at that point in sort of progressing more along the management track. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought actually maybe it is the right time.

Because I think every software engineer reaches a point in their career when they sort of have to not have to, where there's an opportunity for them to make that decision whether or not they want to continue as an individual contributor or if they want to actually step into the management track and pursue that side of it. Because yeah, I mean also like.

I didn't want to necessarily be still coding full time in my 50s, you know, although I know a lot of people who are above 50 and are still full time individual contributors. There's nothing wrong with it. Of course, it's a choice, but I decided for me personally that would be the best, the best way

forward. Because I also do like soft engineering is funny sometimes because it is really easy to burn out and I think you burn out a lot without even realizing it. There's like, small signs that people don't really pick up in themselves when they are burning out. Yeah, yeah. And then my manager asked me again, will you apply for the role? He's like, please apply for the role. So I was like, OK, so I applied for it, did the interview, did a small presentation and yeah, I

got the job. Basically sounds like a great manager as well to kind of see that this is maybe in line with what you want to do, even though you might not have noticed and this is a good opportunity and a good fit. And the last thing is it's still, I still do some individual contribution. It's not like a full time management role. So there's still I still work on clients. How's the ratio? It's more or less like it. It varies, you know, depending

on the need. But I would say mostly like 8020. OK. So, yeah, so like kind of the opposite of what you had in the team lead, more or less. Yeah, makes sense in kind of

stepping into that team lead role because that's where I'm at now actually. And that's kind of a recent change to see if this engineering manager path or track is kind of something I like because I like interacting with people. I like talking about personal development, about growth. But there's a lot of challenges there. Like I I did this course and it was more so about influence styles and I noticed I can, I can be really good at like the logic part.

So argumenting, setting expectations, even asking questions. I mean the podcast is fully in line with that being curious and I'm I'm less great at kind of the inspiring part, maybe that's kind of what your manager did for you as in we have this role I think you could do it.

That's one of the inspirational part in stepping into that team lead role and even going beyond as full like director of Engineering. Have you seen kind of challenges with how you communicate versus kind of the flexibility that your team requires or what have been some of the challenges? I mean I think you know for when you're when you're a team lead, it's it's. Very much focused on the people.

So that is pretty much your to some extent your only focus, right, making sure that you set people on the correct career paths given everything they need in order to reach their career goals etcetera. And then sort of when you go one level above that then there's other things to consider like the business side of things. So the way I look at it now, it's sort of three, three parts. You have the people management side of it, like actual engineering side of it.

And the business side of it and it's always sort of around finding the balance between those three things. So you have to at some point, you know, learn to put your foot down to some extent. You can't necessarily let people walk over you in the sense of, yeah, I don't really know how to put this, but you have to to put it. I plainly I think deny some requests.

You have to learn to say no essentially a lot more than you would in a in a typical team leader because part of your focus is on the business side of things as well. You know like how are the margins on a particular project.

You know what can we do in terms of staffing to make the margins a bit higher and but at the same time also make sure that the people we are allocating to a particular project or a particular client are going to be happy there and it fits their career growth or their career goals and their their skill set as well. Yeah. It's like I say, it's like 3 prongs basically. Yeah. And the business side I think comes kind of the higher up you get probably. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, right.

Yeah. But I mean, going back to what

you were saying about the old recent change to team lead, yeah, it's interesting because I think. If you're new to a leadership role then it always takes a little bit of time to sort of find your leadership style and it's there's no sort of right way or wrong way to do things. What I think is really has the most value is just being authentic. If you just if you are sort of have natural leadership capabilities then you can literally just be yourself and that's it.

And that is, to be honest, how I've gotten through most of my career as a leader is just literally by being myself and not trying too hard. Because I think it's it's it can be quite obvious sometimes when. Someone is being like they are sort of forcing themselves with depth or adopt A particular leadership style. And it might not suit them, but that's OK. And it does take a while for you to sort of find your footing and to find your leadership style.

So yeah, I try. I think it's really hard to act like someone I'm not like. I think I'm authentically myself kind of most of the time or hopefully all the time. But I do see sometimes limitations or I hear stories about what other people do and be like. Maybe I could grow in that or maybe I'm not great at that yet. Like there was a conversation and this was years back with people that have, for example, end of year, end of year chats.

I'm not sure if it was this company actually, but it was a while back and they said, well, I talked to my manager and there was a mismatch in expectations, right? And that manager was like putting the blame somewhere else and like fully on trying to inspire like we can do better next time. I'm going to put you in positions and stuff like that. And I'm like they only did

inspire basically. And I I might not be great at that, but at least I can see where kind of the limitations of certain certain communication styles would be and I try and be as flexible as possible. I don't want to enforce anything upon anyone. That's why I was really curious if you had, like if you were ever in a position where you had to do that, because I would really struggle with that.

I feel like if I had to follow through on something I don't believe in, yeah, I think that's really hard. Yeah, it is. I mean, there there have been

certain situations where I've sort of said no, very directly. It's something that I don't agree with. Yeah. I mean, one instance does come to mind, but it's not something I can necessarily talk about, Sure, unfortunately. But yeah, I also like you have to be true to yourself to some extent, right? That is sort of part of being authentic. Yeah. Staying true to yourself. And that's, I think that's one thing that is quite sort of undervalued in terms of what people think about leadership.

So yeah, always try and keep that in mind. It should be your North Star. Just. For yourself, yeah. How was it kind of transitioning into the flip side, cuz you had kind of 4 to 8 hours more so people management as a responsibility and then it flipped and it was like kind of 20% more so hands on stuff. Yeah, it was quite interesting initially actually, because I didn't know what to do with my time. I was like, OK, that's what I was going to ask, yeah.

And then that's when you have to sort of be a little bit more proactive and start finding things to do to some extent as well and following up with people. And you know, just like ultimately you have to own the role to some extent, right? Like, you know what your mandate is? You sort of know what your boundaries are and what your parameters are that you can work with and like make the most of it.

If you see an opportunity in the company to change something for the better, then you have sort of the power to do it, which is quite nice. So that's a part of it that I really do enjoy. And it took me a little while to actually sort of get to that point where I was like actually I have the power to just do this thing. I have this nice initiative that I want to implement.

Let's see if I can make it work. And with those initiatives, how often are you in the driver's seat and how often do you like, enable other people or like, get a following to? That's a good question. Actually, because it's, it's often times in situations like that it's a great opportunity to test someone else's leadership abilities as well.

Yeah. So because the team leads report to me, I will often try and delegate, delegate things to them to see how they might handle a particular situation, Yeah. And then you can see a person's sort of strengths and weaknesses through that, through that as

well. But there are of course some initiatives that I will take upon myself to do if I always and it's a little bit weird, but I always have this thing in my head, like, if you want something done right, do it yourself, which is not necessarily the right attitude to have. So I do try and put that in the back seat as often as possible. But there are some things where if it's really important, then I know I'm gonna do it myself

because. Either if it goes South and I will be the one to take responsibility for it, yeah. Or if it works really well, then no, then it works really well. So yeah, it's I think it boils down to the accountability part, right? Can I, how do you say that? Like can I give this away or do I need to kind of keep control on this and make sure this goes right? Because this is maybe more important or at least more important to me. Yeah, it also depends on

schedules, right? I mean, sometimes I just don't have the time to do to do things, so then I have to delegate them. So is that hard?

Because I from my role, I like doing a lot and sometimes saying no to stuff I really want to do is kind of painful. Yeah, I guess prioritization becomes important in, you know, in time management because if they're if I know something is coming up on the horizon that I really do want to do, then I will try and make time for it. So I'll either and delegate something I'm busy with to someone else or.

Find some way to make time in my schedule for that particular thing that I'm super interested in. Yeah, and that makes sense. You you touched on burnouts a

little bit ago as well and I'm, I'm wondering if you have any like affordances in place to kind of see burnout signals early on because it is more so rampant. I would say within our field. I was having this chat with someone and he said something interesting like even even take Scrum as a framework we work in sprints is that no other athlete sprints over and over and over again and and we do and I was like that's genius like that's a really good that is true.

So it might even be apparent in in our way of working, but I yeah that's I'm not sure what the solution. Would be. I mean there's there's sort of certain science you can pick up in engineers I think when they are starting to burnout, especially from you know sort of lack of energy. Yeah, just the way a person talks, the way that they sort of. Interact with you or the way that they behave in certain situations. Like one of the biggest signs

for me is cynicism. When when someone starts becoming super cynical about the work that they're doing, then that for me is a clear sign of burnout. Like they are not they are not necessarily enjoying the work that they're doing anymore. But it's also it's it's it's kind of difficult because you know when you really enjoy something that you do, you want to do it a lot right? But with with. Software engineering. I think if you do it too much, then you do tend to burn out.

I mean, when I first started, I was working a lot. You know, I was like when I got home from work, I was opening up my computer and working more because I wanted to do it. It was fun and it still is fun. But you have to also be careful, You know, there's there's, you have to find that balance again between making sure that you are, you know, able to actually code. Yeah, sort of a good standard. Without draining your energy too much.

So, but there's there's a lot of variables that come into it as well, depending on the project. I mean, they are super high stress projects as well where you can burn out super quickly. But yeah, I think luckily in the Netherlands there's again a really big culture of this work life balance, which I think is missing in a lot of other places. And that's really nice. And I find, at least from my experience up to now, there's a lot of people who take that very

seriously. You know, when 5:00 comes or 6:00 comes. Laptop is closed. Yeah, sorry. No worries. And that's it. They don't think about work until the next day. Yeah, but are you also taking

that into account in your own way of working? Cuz sometimes I'm like, I'm typing this e-mail cuz I'm working late and I'm like, should I send this e-mail? Cuz some people, when they receive an e-mail, they think about work or they get into a mode where they have to do stuff and I'm like, maybe I'll just you can now schedule stuff to send during office. Hours.

I tend to use that scheduling functionality quite often as well, because, yeah, sometimes with the nature of my role, I have to respond to emails after working hours and that type of stuff. But there are days I don't have my e-mail or my personal phone, for example. I have Slack just in case of emergencies.

But so there are days, for example, where I just do not want to sort of. At work after working hours and then I'll just leave my work phone upstairs or leave my laptop upstairs and not really worry about it. If something is really urgent, someone will phone me. But of course, like it typically is 9 to 5 most of the time. And they're so in certain industries, so there's not really a hell of a lot of action that happens after hours.

It's mostly just like follow up emails and small things here and there, the top stuff. So yeah, you touched upon the kind of engineering part, the people management part and the business part as well. And I'm wondering, I'm assuming

you got more involved into hiring as well as kind of expanding your own team or even the team laser team managers there. Is there any like particular thing you always pick on where we're hiring or what is kind of your focus when hiring for new people? I think capability for me is the most important thing, so regardless of a person's color, agenda, anything like that. They should be capable, but in general, I think hiring in tech is a little bit broken. It's like for example, the whole

thing with the live coding. I think that's a little bit ridiculous to some extent. I understand the necessity you have to sort of make sure that the person that you are wanting to hire is actually has the skills that you're looking for because people lie on their CVS and blah blah blah blah, but. Yeah, I think it's trying to write code in an environment like an interview is not really super cool. No. For anyone, really. I mean, it sucks. It's stressful. It really sucks. Yeah.

Yeah, sorry. And yeah, it is really stressful. And I don't know one person who enjoys doing that stuff. No. So I honestly discourage it for our teams because you can ask very technical questions or ask someone to walk you through a solution that they've built. And just by hearing a person talk, you can understand whether or not they are capable, if they actually understand what it is that they're talking about.

It's a very big difference, for me at least, between someone who has really internalized the concept versus someone who has maybe read about it a few times and has some insight. So that, I think, is one key point that people don't think about too often. So in my opinion, do away with the live coding because it really sucks. It's horrible. Nobody likes it. Is that your process then as well? That there's no kind of live coding component or?

Well, since I'm not really involved in the technical interviews anymore, I don't always know whether or not they are doing live coding, but I discourage it. Like I say, if a person who is doing the interview feels like they need to do it, then they can do it. But yeah, it's not sort of mandatory, let's say. I get that. For me, I always enjoy from both

ends, more so the conversational aspects. But it is like I I get what you say that you can pick up if someone has internalized those concepts, but I feel like it's still kind of difficult because if their way of working is, let's say, lacking, I mean they can fix that, but sometimes it's also hard to fix. Yeah, yeah, true.

I mean, one thing I I tell people quite often as well is even if a person, if we're hiring for example, for a senior role and we can see that a person is not necessarily. On a senior level, technically. But they have great soft skills, they are great communicators, you know, they talk easily. Then we would still hire them at that senior level because it's

easy to teach technical skills. In my opinion, it's not so easy to teach soft skills, like you can't necessarily change a person's culture in a short period of time and you don't. That's not maybe something you want to do, but also like you will never get it 100% correct because. Nobody is their true self during an interview. You know, they are selling themselves to some extent, so they are bullshitting here and there. Of course, that's a great thing. Everyone does it.

Yeah. So, yeah, you have to sort of to some extent trust your instinct as well. And that's why we have things like probation periods, where if someone is not sort of what you expected or how they presented themselves during an interview, then you have the opportunity to let them improve or to let them go basically. So without naming any names like, has that happened where

you hired someone, just your instincts, but at the end like it wasn't as good of a match as you thought it would be? Well, yeah, I mean that has that has happened, but it's never happened where we've let someone go during the probation period because they've always sort of. I mean, if you sit down and have a serious discussion with someone and tell them, like, look, this is the expectation, this is what we expect of you. You're not sort of reaching it yet, but you have some time to

still get there. And if that person then sort of sees that and you can see them trying, then it's more or less OK. And I think that's mostly the situations that I find myself in because, yeah, like I say, you'll never get 100% right. And your gut is always not right. Maybe you have a hangover and your gut is just hungry. Yeah. Like, yeah, it's not. It's not. It's not going to always be perfect, unfortunately.

Have you gotten better at having those conversations? Because it's for me to have that conversation. I think I can do it, but it is. It can be a difficult conversation, like setting the expectation, being like, especially with a person that just got on, like, you might just crush their motivation if you do it the wrong way. Have you gotten better at that? Well, we have done a lot of

training. Obviously we have a lot of ongoing like sort of management training and that type of stuff and difficult conversations is one of the. Topics that is always there. Yeah. And but honestly, the more you do it, the easier it becomes, you know, and you can sort of there's like AI don't know

really how to put this. It's like a red thread that runs through any sort of dialogue where you you sort of know what points to touch on and what points not to touch on touch on, regardless of a person's culture or anything like that. Yeah. And again, like, if you are authentic and transparent, then people will sort of listen, you know, and have, yeah, just have like empathy with people.

Try to put yourself in their shoes and understand how they would be feeling if they were the ones receiving, sorry, if you were the 1 receiving the feedback from them, from yourself. And yeah, that's. I mean, again, it's never, it's never easy, but the more you do it, the easier it does become. Yeah, I really like that. You have to just keep doing it. It's like that scene from Bojack Horseman thinks it's a popular meme all the time.

Like, it's really what something like it's really difficult, but you have to. It gets easier. You just have to do it. You have to keep doing it every day. Something, something along those lines. Yeah. And that's basically how it is. The more you do it, the easier it becomes. Yeah.

Is there any kind of moving from IC to Engineering Manager and even Director? Has there been any, like, specific components that you don't really enjoy compared to the other ones? Or ones that you even

surprisingly do enjoy? Well, I think the ones that I don't enjoy, of course, like I think any reasonable human, all the difficult conversations because you know, sometimes you have to sort of not necessarily reprimand someone, but you have to remind them of where they are and that they can't necessarily. You know, because people will always take advantage.

Some people will, will take advantage where they see the opportunity to do to do so. So having conversations where you have to sort of remind someone that they can't do a certain thing or that they have stepped out of line like address their behavior. Yeah, exactly. Those conversations are even still like always a little bit difficult to have because to some extent you're sort of like not hurting that person. But you're saying, you know, you're you're like, I don't know, you're sort of.

Rubbing them the wrong way to some extent, because I mean, I know from my own personal experience with my manager tells me you outline doing this, then it doesn't feel great, right? It's like a little bit disappointing when you sort of have to have to deal with situations like that. But so yeah, difficult conversations I think are the part that I don't enjoy. And the rest, I think I would say I enjoy the rest like equally there's nothing.

I can think of that sort of sticks out as something that I enjoy more than something else. Yeah, You think you'll ever grow

to a point where you're gonna let go of the hands on part, even though it's like 20% now? Will there ever be 5 or 0 even? Maybe, maybe not. I mean you know, I I still really enjoy coding. Yeah, so I will still always want to have some some. Some some part in it. But it's funny because we started this sort of internal project recently at work and one of the one of the people who's working on it was like breaking down what technology they were going to use for this particular project.

And it was front end project. And honestly, I didn't recognize half of the half of the shit that she like had put in the message, like, what is this goes quick. I haven't. Even heard of this and it's it hasn't even been that long since I was like out of it. So. 02021 like 2-2 and a bit. I think maybe 2, 1/2 or so. Yeah, things go fast. Yeah, and it's it's it's amazing how quickly it does actually move.

Yeah, like the only the only two things I recognized out of all that whole stack was React and TypeScript. I mean, that was. Like the rest of the stuff. But yeah, I mean The thing is also you have to have some level of trust in the people that that you manage as well to make sure or or to be confident that they are capable enough to make decisions for themselves. So it's hard to then go back as

well. Like if you're on this let's say engineering manager track and you're two years down the line and you might at some point want to go back, then especially when it comes to front end technologies like certain fundamental knowledge will always be there. But it when it comes to kind of the the latest tech that everyone's using, you might have to kind of catch up again. Yeah, definitely. Which is quite, quite hard. Although I don't, I don't really think it'll be that hard to be

honest. I think if you like, you say those those fundamental concepts don't necessarily leave you that quickly. So if you were to pick it up again after a few years, I think you would probably pick it up relatively quickly, I would say in my opinion, but I don't know, I mean, no, right? One way to find out I can go, I don't know, rebuild some website I built 10 years ago and see how that goes. But yeah, one of my biggest

concerns going on this track and especially doing it in the same company. Like, I like being friends with my colleagues, but not just be colleagues but also know about their personal life. And when shit is like hitting the fan, we talk about it like there's no filter. I feel like if I get to a point where I have more of the business responsibilities as well as the people responsibilities, those conversations are not going to

be as authentic. There's going to be this hierarchy in place that I might be their team leader, manager or what have you and I feel like I'll lose that, which is like scary to me because I don't want to lose that, but I feel like it might be inevitable. Yeah, it's it's actually this is something I've thought about quite a bit because I've been in the situation a lot. So I have worked with like some of my best friends as their managers and the way.

Have this comparison so you know how in software we always sort of have the separation of concerns. Like you always maintain the separation of concerns when you're creating an application or something. You have to sort of keep that same mindset when you are working or managing your friends as well. And that's the same thing that I tell them compartmentalization. So if we are talking in a work context, then forget about everything else you know and just.

That's basically it. Like when I'm at work, I'm your boss and that's it. We can still talk shit and blah blah blah blah and have fun. But there are certain situations like I I know this one friend of mine who he recently left the company actually, but you know, I I told him at one point, just tell me when you need to have a serious conversation and then that's it. Like the friendship goes out the window for 5 minutes while we talk about it and that's it.

And it actually makes those work conversations a little bit easier because you're also sort of very comfortable with that person. And they might not necessarily be too easily offended at something you say that they don't agree with. Yeah. So yeah, just that that sense of separation concerns, compartmentalization becomes really important when you do, work with or manage your friends on that level.

Did that, like, come easy to you, flipping that switch and being like a yeah cuz it sounds like it. Yeah, I don't know why, but work for me is like a box. It's completely different to. Like work, relationships are of course different to relationships outside of outside of work. Yeah, but things like that just just feel very natural for me. It might be the only way for me to handle that, but I like I have really good memory, especially when we have a conversation.

What someone said, like it sticks with me, helps with this podcast. Yeah, I can imagine that. But in in having those conversations in and out of work, then for me, I think it would be hard to, I don't know, maybe even let go of some things like I don't know how I would handle that. Like that, to me is kind of the scary part. Yeah, but again, that's something that sort of comes with practice. When you do it enough, you sort of get used to it, yeah.

And then you find a routine that works for you. It doesn't have to be what the other person is doing. It can be. You will find your own way of dealing with it eventually, yeah. And you communicating that to your team or to your friends even, has that allowed them to kind of be as open with you or do you still notice that they're not telling you everything sometimes? Sometimes I do notice that,

yeah. But for the most part, I think it's, you know, again, there's transparency is super important. And that's one thing that I always do try and press on people as well, especially if I'm working with friends. Just be, be transparent. I mean, we are friends, right? You can tell me what, whatever. It doesn't matter. I'm not going to get annoyed with you. I'm not going to fire you. I'm not going to, you know,

like, whatever. So yeah, I mean there was a situation where a friend of mine who I was working with was. He had, he didn't tell me at the time, but he had done a few interviews and was looking at accepting a final offer from a different company. Yeah, and he only, he came and told me only when he was when he had the final offer. He was like, I didn't tell you I was doing interviews and things like that, but I have this offer, you know, I got it, yeah.

What can you do about it? And I was like, OK, well, yeah, you should have come to me first because we can pay you more than what that company is offering you. So you should have just come to me first with whatever the issue was. And in that case, it was a salary issue. Yeah. So yeah, like, again, just if you can impress on them to be transparent and open with you as a friend in a work context, then that should be fine. Yeah, just in general, cuz I

think what you laid out is quite interesting. I've heard that before that people look outside, get an offer, and then try and negotiate whatever they have. Yeah. Why is that a thing? Why? Why can't it just be like, oh, you get what you deserve in kind of an end of year chat? Why do people have to go outside and then kind of renegotiate their position sometimes? I don't know.

I think it's like this thing of, you know, people get super comfortable where they are, especially if you're there for a long, long period of time. But then, you know, you see someone else who's like earning a little bit more on a different company. And you know, you start sort of daydreaming about the lifestyle you could have if you're earning that much money, blah blah blah, so. Yeah. Then you sort of get to the end

point with that. You all sort of need to make a decision whether you're actually going to leave and go work for that other company. And I think human nature people want to stay where they're comfortable and then they start having second thoughts and like, OK, but maybe I can use this leverage at, you know, where I am currently to get to get more money And from my, from my experience because this has happened quite often and it works. It does sometimes, like we we've.

I've I've had situations where someone has said I have an offer from another company. What is anything you know, like can you match it or can you do better? And in some cases like, no we can't, but we can. We can do this or we can set out a plan for the next three years where we can get you to you know somewhere close or whatever it is. And in most cases people will accept that rather than jumping ship and going, going and working for another company, because that whole thing is

really stressful, right? Like going. Yeah, exactly. It's like no one really wants to do that. But at the same time, it's sort of like a double edged sword because life begins at the edge of your comfort zone, right? Like you have to become uncomfortable to grow. So yeah, you sort of risk becoming too content if you stay somewhere for too long.

And I think that's one of the important things about being a leader as well is trying to get people out of their comfort zones to make sure that they are still feeling engaged as often as possible because. And it's also like it, it comes down a lot to the individual themselves like some people just are not super interested in career growth and they are happy where they are and they just like coast, you know, but they are the people who are super ambitious and want to grow fast

and they want to grow far. So as a as a manager you have to identify those like two different types and react accordingly, Yeah. Do you also like put more energy

into the one that wants to grow kind of faster and and has more career ambitions compared to the people that coast? Definitely, yeah. Because you know, to some extent the people that coast, you can always like The thing is, yeah, I mean, you can lead a host of water, but you can't make a drink, right. So you can sort of encourage a person who is not super interested in career growth to, you know, pursue a particular thing. And whether they do or not is ultimately up to them.

It's a choice that they they have to make. Yeah. But typically, from my experience, at least from the people who are really ambitious and who do want to grow. They don't necessarily know where and how, so that's the people who do need a little bit more guidance and mentorship. And honestly, as a manager, you have to have time to invest into people because that's how people grow. For me, mentorship was one of the most important things for me.

I had great mentors throughout my career and that's one of the reasons why I was able to sort of reach. Where I am was because I had a lot of great people to look up to and to learn from. And I think without that people who are sort of not necessarily in the early stages of their career, but maybe looking for a career change or looking for something new, it's important to be able to offer them that path. You know, within like the parameters of where you work.

You might not be able to give them everything they want, but you can try, you know, and come come to some sort of reasonable. Middle ground, Yeah, I really aligned with that. Like I was always when I joined, like especially in my first

company, I joined in operations. I wanted to grow as fast as possible cuz I had no clue where I wanted to end up, like where I would end up. But I wanted to get there faster cuz I knew it would be maybe more relaxed, maybe more comforting in knowing that I really like what I'm doing and this is gonna be there for the long haul. Now. I still don't know if I found it and I'm I'm still kind of on this track of of trying to grow, trying to develop on a personal level and I don't think it ever

goes away. So then to offer that, to now be able to offer that to other people is for me like the bare minimum, like that's what I'm here for. I want to offer you those options that I had also in growing in my career myself. And I do recognize that some people have kind of different ambitions in that aspect and we'll pull on you harder than others. And in the beginning I thought it was very difficult because I I wanted to be equal to everyone, right?

Equal distribution of my time, yeah. But if not everyone requires equal distribution of my time, then I shouldn't do that basically. Exactly. Yeah. That's what I do. I mean, there are some people on my team who I have monthly calls with, Yeah. And there are other people who have biweekly calls with and others want to talk to me every single week. So it all depends sort of what the situation is and what they want. And yeah, how you exactly can help them? Yeah, absolutely.

You touched on transparency as well when it kind of came to that conversation with your colleague, with your friend, when it came to them kind of looking outside of the company. Transparency has always been an interesting topic for me because especially from an IC role like I I'm like, give us more information because I think everyone I work with is a reasonable human being. The the more problems we know, the more like we know about what's going on. We can also offer help in that way.

So now, especially in the position I am, sometimes they're like, or there's conversations where they're like, OK, this might not be the best time to kind of talk about this thing. And I'm like, why not? Like, I try and challenge everything because I also don't like holding my cards close to me. I guess maybe that's there's a

wrong analogy. I just don't like talking about things that are kind of in the middle or when someone brings up something, I'm like, well, something's coming, but I can't really talk about it. I have a real hard time doing that. Sometimes. I don't do that because I don't really see sometimes why we can't communicate and be more transparent as an organization.

Like it can be a general thing. But have you ever found yourself in positions where you couldn't be as transparent or where even your transparency hurt rather than it they could? Yeah, because I'm curious about that. Yeah, definitely. I mean it happens all the time, especially in more senior management roles because again you have part of it is business focused, right. So, but my approach is normally to say like if someone asks a particular question or was looking for specific piece of

information. If I know that information, but I know that I also can't tell them, then I will tell them like, hey, I know this, but I can't tell you about it, OK? It's because of these reasons. And often times that's that's sort of enough. I think what is helpful for a lot of people, often if they have grievances is literally just to talk about them, you know, because that helps to just sort of clear the air a little bit.

But yeah, there's definitely been instances where, you know, I haven't been able to be as transparent as I would like to be because of the business side of things. Or for fear of sort of maybe hurting their feelings. Or I don't know, like not, I don't know like sending them off the wrong or sending them onto the wrong path.

This type of stuff, when it comes to the information that is kind of, let's say, withheld sometimes. Where does that lie in? Like what information is shared and what information usually is like? OK, we can't share this yet, but we're working on this. Is it like because it obviously affects the people within your team, but I'm not sure where the line is then?

Well, it depends. I mean, a lot of it I would say is around like policies, new policies that are upcoming, things that change, salary, brackets that changed stuff. Because I always feel, especially from like, I always try to lean back on my experience as a software engineer. Because there's. I mean, it's. 90% of it is problem solving, right? Like you're basically solving problems.

And if there is, if there's a particular piece of information that I know that I that I can't necessarily share with someone, then yeah. Again, just like, be honest with them and tell them like, hey, I know this, but I I can't tell you because it's gonna like you like it'll come out eventually. Yeah. There will be an announcement or there will be an e-mail or something to let people know. No. But then when it comes to the information, do you see a line between what can be shared and

what cannot be shared? It's more so policy based you mentioned. Yeah, policy based pretty much. But there is I mean. It also depends on the relationship that you have with the person, right?

Like sometimes if even if you are not necessarily supposed to share something that you can because you trust that person, then that, then that's also OK. That also like helps to build a relationship with that person as well because they feel a little bit more like you are being more transparent with them. So it has happened to me on a few occasions where I'll be like, I can't actually tell this, I don't tell anyone.

But this is the story. I love that you're honest about that because I hadn't thought about that. Like sometimes I feel stupid for playing dumb. Like, yeah, I don't know anything about that. I'm really bad at that. What's? Talking about yeah, but just just explaining to them like something is coming and I can't talk about it. I think I'm. I'm gonna adopt that for sure, cuz I don't like playing dumb. Yeah.

The thing is, I mean, then people will sometimes go and look around for information in other places. Yeah, Yeah. Again, I think transparency is really important, especially in leadership roles as often as possible. Yeah, I think reason of course, for sure. Yeah.

And kind of laying out your track from IC to engineering manager, engineering director. Is there anything that's still missing that you want to add to the conversation we had? I'm not sure. I think I would say for anyone who's sort of transitioning through that period, don't like, don't be too worried, you know, And if you feel like you're not sort of able to find your feats in leadership.

Everyone feels like that it will take a little bit of time, and if it doesn't, then damn, please come and work for me because we need people like you. But yeah, it'll take time to find a leadership style and you don't have to necessarily adopt one particular style, right? There's also a lot about flexibility. Different people require different styles of management as well. So you have to be adaptable and you have to be flexible in that sense. So yeah, just.

There was, there was this guy who worked at our company on the design team like years ago and he said one thing, it was in context it sounded really silly but it stuck with me and he was he said just be like water, just go with the flow and that just be like water thing is something that I think is actually really valuable advice to be honest. So and not always, you can't always just go with the flow like sometimes you have to fight back and swim upstream. But yeah, for the most part.

It's OK to just go with the flow and don't feel bad. Impostor syndrome effects, everyone. Yeah. So yeah. And you're flexible like water as well. Yeah. Yeah. Good stuff. I love that. Cool man. Thanks, Michael. This was a lot of fun. Thank you so much for coming on ARE. We done already? Yeah. I'm gonna round it off here. How did things go? Yeah, good. We're still recording. No, no, I would imagine so hell, but it was good. It was went a lot faster than I thought though. Yeah, right.

Those are good conversations, I've noticed. I appreciate it. Thank you. Great interview. Thank you. Thank you. I try. Cool. I'm going to round it off here, everyone. I'm going to put all Michael socials in the description below, check them out, let them know you came from our episode. And with that being said, thank you for listening. We'll see you on the next one.