Book - Making of a Manager, by Julie Zhuo

If you are a newly promoted manager and struggling to figure out what the job is like. Don’t worry you are not alone - this book is exclusively only for you - go get a copy and keep it on your table (I have mine). Having read multiple books about management and leadership; also attending relevant sessions - nothing really stuck to me like this book. Maybe there is a reason, I could connect.

Trivia: The author - Julie Zhuo is the VP, Product Design at Facebook, having successfully worked her way up the ranks.

In this book, Julie - I would call her an accidental manager; becomes a manager at the age of 25, just because the size of her team was growing. She wasn’t prepared - she had no idea where to start and what to do and most importantly what she should NOT be doing. She juggles her way through trying to be a good manager and fighting her inner conflicts (read soul) - which was still an individual contributor(IC). And this was exactly where, I was able to connect to Julie and her book. As, I was a IC - who loved to code (time flies when I was coding) - excitement/feeling of making a feature work was awesome.

Hard Truth: The roles and responsiblities of a Manager vs IC is completely different - you cannot do both. Well if you are doing it - then you are a superhuman!

I was trying to do both for years, and it wasn’t scaling up. I was signing up for features and assiging bugs to myself - and it was hard to balance the time between the needs of the actual role(/team) vs my own code deliverables.

Well, don’t get me wrong. I dont mean, you should stop coding when you become a manager. I still code (mostly on weekends), but just that - we need to understand, that its NOT your primary responsibility. My guidance: the code you work on, should not be in the critical path and there are no depenencies (someone waiting for you to deliver).

I have been a manager for just over 5yrs as of today(Jun/2021). So, I might not have lot of experience. But this book definetly made a difference for someone like me who became a Manager being an IC.

It’s an easy to read book - you might feel like Julie is sitting on the other side of the table and talking to you - a live mentorship 😉. You can learn a lot from this book, irrespective of the team size you are leading (big or small).

Few Key Take aways:

Manager are Made not Born:

This was an interesting revelation for me 😉. This is a skill that you could really work on - if you find the roles and responsibilities motivating/interesting. Julie talks about 3 important things: 1) Purpose 2) People and 3) Process - the why, the who and the how. A great mananger constantly asks herself how she can influence these levers to improve her teams outcomes.

• Why: Your team knows what success looks like and cares about achieving it. Success would be embody both - self (career) and for the product (company).
• Who: Does the team have the right skill set and the motivation. Trust and coaching to their strengths.
• How: Establishing guidance for principles and rationals behind decicion making.

Art of feedback:

Avoid: It’s time for our Annual Performance Review. Here is how you have been doing for the past year. Aspire: Can I share some feedback for you from that meeting this morning.

Giving feedback as often as possible, keeping it as specific as possible, clarifying what success looks/feels like and finally suggesting next steps. In case of cirtical/bad feedback - don’t do a “compliment sandwich” - as the most important focus point, which acutally matter could be missed.

Hiring Well:

• Hiring is not a problem to be solved but an oppurtunity to build the future of your organization.
• Hiring is Your responsiblity. No recruiter can possibly know what an ideal candidate looks like for your team. So, ensure you describe your ideal candidate as precisely as you can.

I would stop here - and recommend you to go read the book. There are lots of interesting observations and recommendations - which you could try out of the box. Read it, you can thank me later 😆

Highly Recommended!!

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