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by bigiain
1721 days ago
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As a manager, one of the great joys of my job is watching people I've trained and mentored grow and outgrow my organisation, and leave to take on far better roles that are more exciting and challenging that anything I can offer them if they stay. It's also one of the biggest challenges to me, replacing those people, who are often top performers on my teams. But that's my job. It's what I do for this organisation. "As an engineer" I hope you never consider holding your own career progress back just to make that part of my job easier. If that's a serious problem for me, then that's because I failed at _my_ job. I need to have contingency plans and succession plans and we both need you to not be irreplaceable. When I've got my ducks in a row, my reaction is "Right, time to accelerate $otherDev's seniority, temporarily move those @responsibilies to @colleagues with a handover, and call up HR/recruiting to hire in someone with @skillset. Let's plan some celebratory drinks." When you're ready, and when a great opportunity presents itself, do not spend a second worrying about how I'll need to deal with you leaving. While you've probably just made a whole bunch more work for me as I scrabble to fill the gap you're leaving, I will genuinely be happy for you and proud of you for getting there. (And I will try my hardest to communicate that pride and happiness much better than I show my frustration and stress as I do the hard parts of my job.) |
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That's the correct attitude. View your team as a pipeline that produces top people. It's much more rewarding to work that way.