What is the best time to take on a management role?
Hi everyone,
I recently joined a new company and am in the process of onboarding with a new team. After a week, I’ve noticed several challenges stemming from our team lead’s transition back to an individual contributor role. Currently, there’s no clear roadmap, sprint retrospectives haven’t been conducted for a while, and regular 1:1s with engineers are missing.
While the company is trying to hire a new engineering manager, which might take at least three months, I’m considering stepping up to fill in some of the management gaps. I’ve always been interested in moving into a management role, and this situation seems like it could be a good opportunity.
Do you think this is a good idea? If so, how should I go about offering myself for these responsibilities, or should I wait to be approached? Any advice or experiences shared would be greatly appreciated!
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Discussion
(3 comments)- 2
6 months agoEngineering Manager at MistplayMy thought is that as a senior engineer, if some critical job is not being done on the team then that is my job. There’s also very little chance of getting a “no” from proactively booking a retrospective and leading a discussion about how things are going.
Meanwhile whether or not there is an official manager it is great to have regular peer 1:1s to help unblock each other and help the team stay on track for delivering.
And if you have capacity and interest and you lead the team under the radar for a few months in many ways, then that is a great time to propose being the official manager.
- 16 months agoTech Lead/Manager at Meta, Pinterest, Kosei
should I go about offering myself for these responsibilities, or should I wait to be approached
One thing I've learned about career growth: you need to ask for what you want. So if you're interested in management, you should feel empowered to share the gap you observe and how you'd like to fix it.
Here's what would make me comfortable transitioning to management:
- (most important) Alignment with your manager that they're supportive and won't replace you. Also talk about success criteria.
- Talk to the person who is stepping down to understand why, and which relationships they developed (within the team or outside the team) were most important.
- Talking to key people on the team, especially tech leads, about you taking a management role and what concerns they'd have.
- 1
6 months agoTech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course HeroAs Ryan mentioned, being a senior engineer is about filling in the gaps. If nobody else is stepping up, you should.
The thing is that doing this is very weird as a new engineer. It will be hard to add value defining the roadmap and if you do mentorship 1:1s with engineers, that will have low ROI. For more mechanical things like running retro, that should be easy.
I would talk to your current manager (I assume this is your skip?) and seeing what they say. You never know until you ask as Rahul mentioned. The fact that you're asking shows good intent and senior engineering behavior, so even if they say no, you will have achieved something by leaving a good impression.
Regardless of what happens, I highly recommend this. It's sort of similar to your situation: [Case Study] Becoming A Tech Lead Again In Just 1 Month After Joining Robinhood From Meta
