MEETINGS

ABOUT

SPREADSHEETS

Lessons from my first 6 months

as a tech manager

Alex C. Viana

Terbium Labs

SOME CONTEXT

Started at Terbium Labs September, 2014. (3 employees)

Transitioned to VP of Engineering in April, 2016. (14 employees)

Currently 18 employees with 9 in engineering including a CTO.

Responsibilities include those of a personnel manager, product

manager, QA manager, release manager, and senior engineer

INTRO

“The goal of teaching is to pass on what we know

faster than we learned it”

1. Get out of the way.

2. It’s your job to answer questions.

3. Answer questions with process.

4. Take out the garbage.

GET OUT OF THE WAY

The first and best piece of advice I got.

You will block on every time-sensitive technical task you take on.

You need to get out of the way and let your engineers do their

work.

Good news! You can now build those fun non-critical tools for your

team on your down time.

You will feel unproductive but it’s not your job to just write code

anymore.

What should you be doing instead?

ANSWER QUESTIONS LIKE IT’S YOUR JOB

Hint: It is your job.

You need to be able to answer or find the answer to

any question from your technical team.

And answer in context of how it relates to tech,

staffing, product, sales, marketing, QA, etc.

This means you’re going to have to go to “meetings

about spreadsheets” to know what going on across

the company.

How can you reduce the number of question and get

back to your sweet sweet code?

LET QUESTIONS DRIVE PROCESS

Bad news, you’re going to start talking like a manager.

When questions arise think about why they needed to be asked in

the first place?

Why wasn’t this written down?

Why wasn’t this already communicated?

Why is this being done in different ways?

Can someone take the lead on this?

You now get to engineer process instead of just code.

TAKE OUT THE GARBAGE

Taking out the garbage is a bummer. A house full of

garbage is worse.

Schedule (and stick to) doing recurring tasks that are

only manageable if doing regularly.

Going through your issue backlog and PRs.

Planning your sprints.

Meet with other teams and give updates

Checking in with your developers and giving

feedback.

THANKS!

@AlexVianaPro