Building Strong Foundations for Engineering Leadership

The hard thing about being promoted to manager, or a manager of managers, is that each step is a completely different job – one you have not trained for. On top of that, it’s both harder to know _what_ to do and _how_ you’re doing, since your new manager is farther from your day-to-day work. Being promoted to a new management role, even though it’s a good thing, usually involves a steep learning curve on a set of brand new challenges, and the associated stress can contribute to a decline in mental health.

This talk is about applied learnings from my experience handling these challenges, as I made the transition from IC to an engineering manager to VP of Engineering of a 40-person team – working on improving government services for millions of people – in the span of a year. I draw upon my experience building technology to help people build habits and change behavior, as well as mistakes I’ve made as a startup founder.