Kevin is the VP of Engineering at Abnormal Security, overseeing all aspects of growth and execution. In this class, Kevin describes the requirements for building a well-rounded and highly functional engineering team from both a technical and cultural perspective. Kevin spent time at eBay and Quantcast prior to becoming an early-stage engineer leader at TellApart, then a Director of Engineering at Twitter.
I think the kind of interesting thing about this is you have to think about. In the most prototypical example, which is usually for someone entering a manager role as an engineer, prototypically, they're usually a senior engineer or a tech lead on their team that has moving into this leadership and management position.
Kevin W: And the kind of interesting thing about this particular problem is that the skill sets and qualifications that earns you the opportunity to become a man. We're actually very different. The skillsets you're going to be evaluated on for success as a manager, after the fact, we just ironic, right?
Generally speaking, these types of managers who convert from, being technical, individual contributors, they were given that opportunity because of. They wrote code to the highest quality they had already commanded the respect right of their peers. They were seen as the leaders from a [00:27:00] technical proficiency.
Yet once you do that conversion to a manager, you're going to be evaluated on very different metrics, right? It's now your ability to train other people, to write high quality code, your ability to hire and retain great talent, your ability to process and project manage the delivery of your actual team.
That becomes a critical functions they are being managed on. So I find one of the things that's actually interesting. You have to just fully embrace that. You're moving into a new role that is going to require very fundamentally different skills development to be successful and holding onto the past.
What got you, where you got to being very different. The path forward is just a recipe for failure. There's a clear half-life to the skillsets that got you the chance to become that manager in the first place of your knowledge of the code base, in your command of the right design patterns to be using for this particular system.
And if you just hold onto that one, ironically not only is your effective. Diminishing because your knowledge of the code base is declining every single day. [00:28:00] You're also preventing engineers from your team to step up into that new actual role as well, which ironically is going to prevent them from growing and developing into more competent and more skilled engineers as well.
So I would say you really have to fully embrace you're moving into a new role with very different expectations. once you become that manager.
