I used to think management was the louder version of being an individual contributor. More meetings, higher stakes, same muscles.
Then I watched good engineers stall out under my leadership. Not because they weren’t capable, but because I was spending their attention like it was free. I redirected work mid‑stream. I answered questions the owner should have answered. I grabbed “quick wins” and quietly became the bottleneck.
What changed me wasn’t a book or a framework. It was noticing how I felt after a week: exhausted, yet nothing important moved. The team felt the same. We weren’t broken; our system was noisy.
So I rebuilt the job.
Today my definition of management is simple: create clarity, protect flow, raise standards, and respect reality. The rest is style.
TL;DR: My job isn’t to do the work. It’s to make the work obvious, possible, and worth doing—so capable people can ship high‑quality outcomes without heroics.
Patterns I learned the hard way
Over time, I realized management wasn’t about chasing my own goals—it was about the system I built. Certain foundations kept showing up in every healthy team I admired. These aren’t abstract ideals; they’re practical guardrails that make the work smoother, faster, and more resilient.
Clarity beats speed
People move fast when they know where we’re going, what “done” means, and which constraints are non-negotiable.
I’ve seen teams sprint at full pace, only to discover they were solving the wrong problem. A few minutes clarifying direction is the cheapest performance boost a manager can provide.
Louder plans don’t fix projects. A sharper why does—because ambiguity is the tax on every deliverable.
Flow over frenzy
Focus time, limited concurrent work, and clean handoffs compound. Emergencies should be rare; if they aren’t, that’s a signal to fix the system, not a lifestyle to normalize.
Frenzy looks like effort, but it’s really waste. Sustainable teams don’t run hotter—they run cleaner.
Respect for reality
We take a scientific approach: hypotheses, measurements, adjustments. Opinions are welcome; evidence decides.
It’s tempting to let the strongest voice win, sometimes even my own. But logs and metrics always outlast conviction. Data builds trust where debate stalls.
Structure creates autonomy
Runbooks and conventions aren’t bureaucracy—they’re leverage. Predictability gives people the confidence to solve problems without waiting for permission.
When the rails are clear, people move faster. Structure isn’t a cage—it’s what lets autonomy scale.
Calibrated pressure builds strength
Standards alone don’t drive performance. As a manager, the job is to apply just enough pressure—enough to keep people engaged and growing, not so much that they burn out. If someone feels complacent, I’ve under-challenged them. If they’re anxious or exhausted, I’ve overloaded them. The balance is where people feel stretched, but supported—cups full, not overflowing.
The best measure isn’t metrics, it’s 1:1s. If answers are sharp with frustration, pull back. If they’re flat with indifference, push. And the hardest part is managing the spectrum: not leaning too heavily on your top performers, and not letting under-performers slide. Both are obvious to the team, and both erode trust.
Space with structure
I learned late that “helping” by grabbing work caps careers. Management isn’t about doing the work faster yourself—it’s about creating the conditions for others to do it better. The trick is giving people space to own outcomes while defending enough structure to keep the system healthy.
I keep 1:1s simple: How are things going? What do you need from me? Here’s what I need from you next. One improvement we’ll ship in seven days. The goal isn’t task-tracking—it’s sensing the pulse of the team.
Because here’s the truth: it’s always quicker and cleaner to take the work yourself. But every time you do, you steal learning, trust, and momentum from someone else. My job isn’t to keep the machine running at all costs—it’s to make sure the people running it keep getting stronger.
A scientific culture (without the lab coats)
We don’t try to “win” debates—we test hypotheses. Bring data: logs, metrics, reproducible steps. The burden of proof isn’t punitive—it protects time. Intuition and experience still matter, but they belong in strategy and pacing, not in proving whether something works. When the telemetry says we’re drifting toward a shipwreck, we pivot without ego.
Pace ≠ progress
It took me years to realize my speed doesn’t define the team’s speed. I once forced a new networking solution—something I grasped quickly but the team hadn’t fully understood. I pushed it unilaterally, without their buy-in. Technically, it worked. Culturally, it failed. Trust broke.
That rollout taught me the hardest lesson: personal success isn’t team success. Adoption takes discipline, patience, and consensus. Buy-in is the most efficient path to building something great. Skip it, and you’ll regret it.
Decision hygiene
Early in my career, I treated every decision like it was life-or-death. I overanalyzed the easy ones and rushed the hard ones. Both mistakes cost time and trust.
The discipline I had to learn was this: not every decision deserves the same weight. Some are two-way doors—easy to undo—so you bias toward action. Make the call, move forward, and learn by doing. Others are one-way doors—hard to reverse—so they require more evidence and more care.
Most of my regrets came from getting the two confused: dragging my feet on experiments that should’ve been quick, or charging through decisions that deserved patience. Now I aim for speed where it’s cheap, and rigor where it’s expensive.
Once we decide, we align—disagree, decide, commit. Relitigating is only allowed when new data shows up. Otherwise, indecision bleeds more time than a wrong call ever could.
Operations before innovation
I used to chase shiny features before fixing the basics. It always felt productive—until the system buckled under the weight of ignored maintenance. That was the hard lesson: great platforms are a little boring.
If operations consumes attention, new features won’t save you. If operations is quiet, you can build with confidence. The silence of a well-run system is what gives teams the headroom to innovate.
Now I watch the mix: how much of our time is “keep-the-lights-on” versus change work. If the balance tips too far toward firefighting, we pause “new” and invest in automation, documentation, and cleanup. It feels slower in the moment, but it always pays back.
Boring is underrated. Boring means stable. And stable is what lets innovation actually stick.
Ceilings and floors
Every quarter, I ask: what’s the ceiling of each person? What’s their floor? If we doubled in size tomorrow, what roles could they grow into?
The answers shape how I manage. When people know there’s room to grow—and that I trust them to take ownership—they push boundaries and innovate. Remember: you’re paying people to think and influence, not just execute. Give them that space, and they’ll surprise you.
Trust compounds
Trust is like interest—it compounds. Every time you defend focus time, back someone publicly, or let them truly own a problem, you make a deposit. Every time you swoop in, grab the work, or quietly reroute around someone, you make a withdrawal.
Withdrawals outweigh deposits. One careless comment or undercut decision can erase weeks of trust-building. But if you keep making deposits—predictably, consistently—the balance grows. Once the balance is high, everything runs smoother: decisions move faster, risks are raised earlier, and people stick around longer.
Narratives over metrics
Metrics are critical—they tell you if the machine is working. But stories tell you if people believe in it. A low incident count doesn’t matter if engineers are quietly burning out. An uptime graph doesn’t say if customers are thrilled or just tolerating you.
I’ve learned to pay attention to the narratives that surface in 1:1s, retros, or even offhand comments. Stories about how a rollout went, how painful it was to debug something, or whether someone’s proud to demo their work—that’s where the truth shows up first.
Numbers are necessary. But stories shape belief. And belief is what turns execution into momentum.
Calm is not the absence of urgency
Running a high-performing IT team isn’t about slogans, snacks, or heroic sprints. It’s a craft. It’s the discipline to trade adrenaline for flow, debate for data, and personality for process—without losing the humanity that makes people want to stay.
Calm is not the absence of urgency; it’s the presence of priorities. When we get that right, good engineers become great, the system gets quieter, and the important work actually ships. And when it doesn’t, we don’t point fingers—we adjust, we learn, and we keep moving.
The job is never to be the hero in the room. The job is to create the conditions where your people can do the best work of their careers, again and again, without burning out or burning bridges. That’s management done right—and when it clicks, it’s not just the team that levels up, it’s the whole organization.
That’s the job.
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