The biggest challenge when transitioning from individual contributor to engineering manager?
“The mindset change,” said Wendy Shi, director of engineering at Instacart. According to Shi, who spent the first 10 years of her career as an engineer and architect and the last 10 years as an engineering manager and director, the shift from successfully executing her own projects to distributing impact through her team members took time, patience and practice.
The keys to success, Shi found, were delegation and advocacy.
To gain additional insight and advice on evolving from an individual contributor to a manager, Built In sat down in conversation with Shi and another local engineering manager to discuss their biggest challenges and even bigger rewards since transitioning into leaders.
What they do: Online shopping platform Instacart offers same-day delivery and pickup services to bring fresh groceries and everyday essentials to busy people across the U.S. and Canada.
What was the single biggest challenge you faced during the transition from individual contributor to engineering manager, and why?
The biggest challenge when making the transition from a principal engineer to a team manager was the mindset change. I needed to shift from successfully executing my own projects to distributing impact through team members and effectively influencing people.
I found this challenging because it was initially much harder to evaluate my “success” when my role evolved to supporting and enabling others. Like other new managers, I naturally felt less hands-on control and concrete ownership than before.
This shift, of course, also demanded a new skill set: figuring out what support and guardrails I needed to provide team members so they could be successful, then elevating and advocating for their success across the greater team. In a nutshell — effective delegation, timely verification and powerful advocacy. Eventually, with these new skills in hand, I became more confident holding my teams accountable, serving as an enthusiastic coach and mentor, and focusing on a broader vision and strategy for the overall group.
How did you overcome this challenge, and how has it shaped your approach to management?
I started by building my own support network of managers or peers and finding inspiring mentors, who I worked with directly or indirectly, both internally and outside my company. Next, I worked hard to create open feedback channels with my own and other teams to ensure a timely, constructive flow of communications and great ideas. These efforts helped capture the pulse of my teams, such as how they felt about their work, their growth, and how we as their leaders and managers could help them innovate and reach their professional goals.
Over time, I have developed my own approach to management that is guided by two objectives: optimum productivity and happiness. Every day I am driven to build the most productive and happiest teams. In the long-term, one cannot exist without the other in a healthy, successful organization. I believe that teams are much more creative, happy, and productive when they have an energizing team vision, strong leadership support, and work that aligns with their passions. As a leader, when you demonstrate genuine interest in your team members’ careers as well as their passions, you develop the most important thing in a team: trust.
As a leader, when you demonstrate genuine interest in your team members’ careers and passions, you develop the most important thing: trust.”
What’s the most important piece of advice you’d give to someone who is transitioning into their first engineering manager role, and why?
Be authentic, show your empathy, demonstrate your care, and lead by example. This is how you build legitimate trust and establish a growing culture in a team.
Now that we are working remotely, for new or veteran managers, I would add that it is critical to overcommunicate, maintain greater transparency, and establish a strong team identity to enable efficient collaboration and a genuine sense of belonging. We all definitely work hard, but we should also make time to have fun and get to know one another better. For example in our team, we arrange offsites, play miniature golf and socialize during regular happy hours. In our weekly standing “hangout” meetings, we’ll play games or just catch up. Bottom line: invest in your team members’ careers as well as their passions, and you will build trust among teammates, a sense of belonging, and a cohesive team culture — all essential elements for high-performing groups.
My advice for women making the transition into engineering leadership is to continue to be bold and trust yourself. I also recommend building a strong network of peers and mentors to lift one another up. And from a career perspective, it never hurts to clearly state and ask for what you need or want.
What they do: Verkada helps secure people, places and assets through advanced building security technology that provides full visibility of all devices from a single dashboard.
What was the single biggest challenge you faced during the transition from individual contributor to engineering manager, and why?
I’ve had many technical leadership roles in my career, but management required a different set of skills. After I became a manager, I maintained the technical leadership role I previously held on the team and now I’m directing projects that I was not directly involved in. This was definitely a shift in my work pattern, as I had to handle context switching more gracefully while continuing to be productive. This involved being more deliberate about the documenting process while maintaining clear communication with all the stakeholders — that definitely helped in the transition.
How did you overcome this challenge, and how has it shaped your approach to management?
I overcame the challenge by maintaining clear documentation, and ensuring that I set expectations for the team — expectations for what the product should look like and on product quality in the form of a team charter. In this charter, I outlined a vision for the product, and tried to align expectations on what I expect people to be focusing on. I also defined core metrics for the product that we’re all working together to improve. This has greatly helped to motivate and to set clear goals for the team.
What’s the most important piece of advice you’d give to someone who is transitioning into their first engineering manager role, and why?
The learning process is a J-curve. It takes time to calibrate and hit your stride but I think it’s a worthy experience for anybody looking to get into a tech leadership role. At a high level, try to set clear objectives for the team and clearly define what success looks like. That way, everybody will be aligned on what the team is working to accomplish.
