From Manager to Director: Guide to Managing Managers
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 พ.ค. 2024
- Level-up Engineering Podcast episode 56: From Manager to Director: Guide to Managing Managers - Interview with Mike Seavers (VP of Online Development, Epic Games)
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In this interview we're covering:
-Differences between managing ICs and managing managers
-Story of transitioning from manager to director
-Necessary skills to managing managers
-Common mistakes of new directors
-Warning signs for new directors
-Choosing from director candidates
-Support from executive leaders to new directors
-Story of coaching a director new to managing managers
-Bonus advice to managing managers
Excerpt from the interview:
"I first became a director and started managing managers about 17 years ago. My team consisted of five sub-teams, about 50 people combined, and I had six or seven managers reporting to me. We were going through an Agile transformation.
I spent all my time focusing internally, working with my team. I attended stand-ups, we were teaching Scrum and we were introducing new tooling to manage the Agile process. We changed our release method and other internal processes.
I was proud of what we managed to accomplish, but when it came time for performance reviews, I received the worst review of my career. My peers and everyone around me outside my team said in their feedback that they had no relationship with me. They didn’t know what I was doing, they just saw me making changes in engineering without involving the leaders of the project management team, the release management team, or the QA team."
In working at Big 4, you get and do well as director when you manage up. You also got a opportunity because of your ability to schmooze. I was told directly by a donut boy that my abilities are not going to help me get ahead. And as interviewee said, he had to switch the company to get the bump. Of course also being in the right place at the right time. It's not rocket science to have this role.
Great to hear you Mike! More practical than ideal talks (very rare these days specially in front of camera).
It's so refreshing to see someone being totally honest, and I can agree with him on many levels. I recently got hired at a company and after I passed the interview, the VP suddenly promoted me to Director with a salary bump, and as thankful as I am to this person, I was feeling a bit scared to jump into the role so suddenly. I think this video gave me a lot of useful pointers and a bit more confidence to try my best at the new role, so thanks very much :)
Qap
how is it going, Sir!
It's been 10 month! Do you have an update for us about your engagements? :)
Appreciate the transparency of lessons learned through failure. Biggest value!
Excellent interview! So many learnings, esp. of the errors to look out for
So many golden nuggets!! 😊 thanks Mike
Thanks for the candid no BS tips and for sharing your experience in your tech leadership journey
This was an amazing interview. I will be rewatching for sure
thanks for this! Great to hear your perspectives
Great talk, thanks!
Very useful video, many takeaways for managers to transition to new Director leadership role.
thanks for sharing, i am really interested in these kinds of topic
Sounds very genuine and truthful. Thank you for sharing your experience.
First 90 days is amazing!
About what Mike mentioned about communication, there is more into that. As Directors, we have to not just communicate, but effectively articulate our thoughts in a way that we can influence our listeners.
Mike is such a cool dude !!!
Learned quite a bit from this, thank you!!
I am so happy to hear that! Thanks for sharing! 😊🫶
Wow you are so honest
Learned a lot and I'm from manufacturing industry as a Production Supervisor. Thank you!
It is so great to hear that some of this (or maybe most) is applicable across industries! 🙏😊
In my perspective, as a Director, Time Management is just the second on your list. The first thing is Priority Management. If you prioritize effectively, you'll be able to produce more valuable outcome within a shorter time
So if you’re not agreeing to promote someone, should you be prepared to lose them?
How would you weigh replacing/training a new hire in their place?
Amazing
I’m currently a manager but I don’t attend daily and managing people in working level… in fact I am behaving like what a director is behaving most of the time.
This is by far the best video regarding this topic. Karolina did a great job of asking questions and letting Mike talk. Great job!
Mike is great in providing information but the interviewer is not connecting.
May I ask, im relation to what you have mentioned about how you fail as a first time Director, what did you do to make that right and improve your numbers?
whole hearted disaggree with his 52:25 point
Thanks for this interview! Would you be able to share the list of books Mike Seavers had read?
Hi!
There are a few great books highlighted in the blog posts covering his interviews:
codingsans.com/blog/managing-managers
codingsans.com/blog/self-managed-teams
@@lvlupeng thanks much!
❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤
how do you weed out incompetent people who were previously at leadership persitions in well known companies, and all they do is talk? like ex-CTO of Riot, or ex-CEO of paypal. You kick them out and they just go be a director somewhere else
Hiring and Firing as per what Mike said, is a responsibility of the HR Team. Directors are data people. We analyze data and act based on our analysis. If the action required is to fire or hire, we coordinate and discuss with the process owners, who in this case are HR peeps.
the interviewer was kinda mid. mike's responses were golden tho
Hi! It’d be great if you could give some constructive feedback, I am always looking to improve! 😊
@@FancyKarolinaFollow-up on answers, challenge some of them with deep-in questions, build a logic story into your narrative/your questions, you don’t have to tell the interviewee how great his answer was after each answer .. that’s some of ad-hoc the tips after watching half of the video
@@firastounsi6402 thank you for taking the time to write this down!
Great guest. Great info. Horrible mic used by host.
Hey there! Thank you for your feedback, please check out our fresh episodes, we have seriously upgraded since then 🙌🏻
Great interviewee, interviewer seems disengaged.
This guy is a bad manager and a very toxic leader. The reason to connect with other peers and managers is so that 1) You can make them successful, and 2) They can make your team more succesful, thus making them more effective and the company more effective. Instead, this persons company and they themselves are just focused on ‘knowing people’ and ‘optics’. Terrible manager, terrible training and he will not be a person we hire in any company
Nothing he said contradicted either of your points.