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The first time I started as a developer on 1 team and evolved into a director of 6 teams, each one a new business unit. I contributed code to most of the teams I managed. I was not the one primarily responsible. I learned a lot as I went, I was very inexperienced for what was required. I learned a lot of ways NOT to do things. If I had to sum things up, I would say before I was helping "connect the dots", now I am connecting all the dots. This time around I am purely a leader and the one primarily in charge of tech. My almost exclusive focus from the start is the people. I have to start over on most things that I evolved through previously.
- I've taken on the responsibility to create and define our culture. My last job I assisted in this area.
- Make sure developers have the tools to be productive. This includes reliable wifi, internet, good coffee, software, furniture, TVs for monitoring, AV system for presenting, conference rooms.
- I've had to earn the trust of the existing people. Previously almost everyone was new on my teams and I hired them, so there was largely trust from the beginning.
- there is churn, like you are going through. I had almost no churn on my teams previously that was not purposeful. I have to explain why the churn is ok and expected.
- I have to teach developers to focus first on "why" they are building a feature, rather than "what" they are building and "how". This helps dev and product see eye to eye.
- I have to teach how to interview, run meetings, do agile right, communicate. Focus on building the right things over building things right. Teach people when to be tactical and when to be strategic. Ultimately, I have to step up and fill the gaps until I can hire and/or train people to assist in that area. Before I had help all along. For example, I've interviewed about 200 candidates in 6 months for many different roles (developer, DBA, sysadmin, product, data). Mainly because interviewing was probably the most important thing I could be doing for the company and the developers.
I'd be happy to go into more detail offline. |