https://www.ericsuh.com/categories/management.html Recent content in Management on ericsuh.com Hugo -- gohugo.io © 2009 – 2022 Sun, 20 Oct 2019 12:00:00 -0800 https://www.ericsuh.com/blog/posts/2019/10/first-two-years-as-a-manager.html Sun, 20 Oct 2019 12:00:00 -0800 https://www.ericsuh.com/blog/posts/2019/10/first-two-years-as-a-manager.html It’s been about two years since I switched career tracks from software engineering to management, and I feel like I’ve learned a ton of lessons, some of which I wish someone had taught me long before I became a manager. Many of them are obvious in retrospect, but I feel like many management lessons are like that. Hopefully, others new to management might find these lessons useful as well. Delegation and project management When I was an individual contributor, I thought “delegation” just meant that you ask someone else to do something! https://www.ericsuh.com/blog/posts/2019/05/end-of-accountability.html Mon, 27 May 2019 23:15:00 -0800 https://www.ericsuh.com/blog/posts/2019/05/end-of-accountability.html I expect that to many people, “accountability” seems like a euphemism for “blame”. That’s hardly surprising, given how it’s used in the media and news. From a recent Vox article on the opioid epidemic: An overwhelming majority of Americans want pharmaceutical companies to be held accountable for the opioid epidemic, according to a new NPR and Ipsos poll. From an op-ed by Chris Hughes, a co-founder of Facebook: The government must hold Mark accountable…. https://www.ericsuh.com/blog/posts/2019/03/modeling-organizations.html Sat, 16 Mar 2019 23:00:00 -0800 https://www.ericsuh.com/blog/posts/2019/03/modeling-organizations.html One of my favorite things about High Output Management was the way Andy Grove treated managing organizations as a special case of managing systems. He starts off his book with a model of a company as a breakfast factory. Similarly, Acolyer in this blog post applies ideas from optimizing distributed systems to the scaling of organizations: I was thinking about the advice I should give to the CTO of a fast-growing company struggling to maintain velocity amongst all the competing demands on his time. https://www.ericsuh.com/blog/posts/2019/02/transitioning-to-management.html Mon, 18 Feb 2019 17:25:00 -0800 https://www.ericsuh.com/blog/posts/2019/02/transitioning-to-management.html About a year and a half ago, I switched roles from software development to management, and it’s one of the most satisfying career transitions I’ve had. There were a few key factors and resources that I think helped me the most in making the transition. High Output Management Until I read High Output Management, I didn’t really know what managers were supposed to do. I knew I had to hire people, write performance evaluations, and help develop people’s careers, but was I supposed to be involved in the architecture of my team’s systems? https://www.ericsuh.com/blog/posts/2017/08/on-james-damore.html Sat, 12 Aug 2017 23:00:00 -0800 https://www.ericsuh.com/blog/posts/2017/08/on-james-damore.html I don’t have anything to say about James Damore’s so-called “manifesto” that these two fine writers haven’t already said. Former Google engineering executive Yonatan Zunger wrote a pretty great piece on what it means to be an engineer, and why Damore’s naivety about it undermines his claims about why there might be fewer women in tech: Essentially, engineering is all about cooperation, collaboration, and empathy for both your colleagues and your customers.