As an Engineer, a successful output is the direct result of my work. Some examples:

• code that works, is well documented and performs exactly what we want it to,

• technical specs that provide the right solution and that myself or the team can easily implement,

• documentation that others can read, apply, and get unblocked quickly.

As a Manager, a successful output isn’t the direct result of my work. E.g., strategy documents and business plans lack the certainty of tech specs. “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

Business results are hard to predict or forecast, especially in organizations driven by innovation. What makes a Manager work successful are:

• the conversations that happened during the process of producing strategy and business plans,

• the systems and connections created while having those conversations,

• the shared understanding and context developed by getting people in the same room,

• the changes in direction, decisions, and behavior implemented afterward.

These things that have the highest leverage and multiply the team’s output don’t usually make much sense from an IC point of view. It can be a real struggle as a new Manager. Why work on a business plan if it’ll never be accurate? Why waste my time in meetings while I could be doing something else that seemed more concrete?

This unpredictability makes the Manager job hard. As a new Manager, I tended to go back to doing the IC job that I was very good at. It prevented my team from growing and fully owning the work. They were relying on me too much, as I did their job instead of mine. I was constantly stressed and tired. Worse, this situation wasn’t scalable.

I had to learn to do the Manager job. I learned that as a Manager, I could be successful just by getting the right people in the same room and facilitating a necessary conversation. As an IC, my success was defined by what I contribute to the discussion in the room. The two roles are critical and different, but everyone has to do their part for the organization to grow and scale.

By embracing my new Manager hat and focusing on these activities that didn’t look like productive work in my previous IC eyes, I set up the organization and myself for success.

My readings in 2021 have helped me:

• fight impostor syndrome and do my job better ;

• put more structure in my ideas around leadership and how to build high performing engineering organizations ;

• compare my previous experiences with that of other leaders, especially in the technology sector ;

• crystallize my own leadership philosophy to express it clearly and share it with others.

On Remote Work

The Culture Map

The Culture Map was the first read at the Orbit employees book club. Erin Meyer compares cultural differences using an 8-scales system that explains how they impact business communication.

Good communication is key to group success. The insights from The Culture Map have allowed me to better understand my remote colleagues from more than 7 countries and 3 continents. Instead of being stressed by accidental misunderstandings, I can now observe, learn and improve more quickly from each interaction.

Rituals for Virtual Meetings

I got this book recommendation from a random stranger on Twitter. It’s filled with practical and straightforward advice to make virtual meetings more lively, especially when you spend a lot of your week in meetings.

On Managing Engineering Teams

An Elegant Puzzle

An Elegant Puzzle was written by Will Larson, CTO at Calm, author of the fantastic blogs Irrational Exuberance and StaffEng.

It touches all the most essential systems and tools for an engineering organization to stay high-performing. It’s an extensive toolset to solve growth challenges in your organization.

Accelerate

It’s THE book to read if you want to better understand what differentiates high-performing engineering organizations from others.

A caveat is that Accelerate only touches the DevOps aspect of engineering productivity. The powerful insights in the book could (and have) been easily misinterpreted and cause leaders to not take into account the whole element of productivity besides engineers churning out features very fast. With great power comes great responsibility.

The Making of a Manager

It’s the book I picked up to remind myself of the fundamental aspects of the manager role when I was first promoted at Orbit. The Making of a Manager is written by Julie Zhuo, a former VP of Product Design at Facebook. Highly recommended for new engineering managers and more experienced ones who need reminders on some aspects of the job. Also, a quick read.

On Building a High Performing Organization

Team Topologies

You ship your org chart, as the saying goes. How you structure your engineering organization and interactions between your teams affect your software architecture. Team Topologies explains 4 team types and how to use them to build a successful software architecture and engineering culture.

The Great CEO Within

I cannot describe how excellent this book is. It doesn’t dabble into unnecessary details. It’s authored by Matt Mochary, one of the most successful CEO coaches in Silicon Valley, and Alex MacCaw, ex-CEO at Clearbit. It presents a practical set of tools and systems to develop a culture of accountability, coaching, and transparency in your company. I’ve read it when it was still a draft in 2018 and have seen myself returning to it every few months when I need to implement new systems. Highly recommended, even if you are not a CEO.

On Building Great Products

Play Bigger

Play Bigger was like a revelation. We’re building a category-creating company at Orbit, and Play Bigger shows a playbook that has worked countless times. A must-read if you want to win your product category.

EMPOWERED

Suppose you want to empower your Product Engineering teams to build innovative products instead of just being feature factories. In that case, you should read EMPOWERED. It’s always very insightful to read books on product management by Marty Cagan and SVPG. This is an excellent follow-up for INSPIRED. Thanks, Guillaume, for the recommendation!

The Art of Agile Development

A great reminder of what Agile really is. The 2nd edition of this classic, published just 3 months ago, is a refresher on the state-of-the-art.

On Career Development

Machiavelli for Women

“for Women” doesn’t mean this book should be for Women only! It helped me better understand the biases women face in the workspace and the ones I could face as a person of color in the tech industry. It’s helped me better face my fears. 

Rise

Rise enlightened me on the American professional environment and how to stand out as a leader. Written by Patty Azzarello, who became the youngest General Manager at HP at age 34. Still learning and practicing. My best recommendation of the year.

Getting team members to think and act like owners isn’t just about asking them to. It’s actually promoting an environment of ownership. So many leaders, despite their best intentions, go on preventing that ownership from happening in practice.

You cannot be involved in every decision of your team if you want your business to scale. Promoting ownership is one of the best things you can do for the team to succeed. Here are the basics you need to put into place for employees to feel ownership of their work.

Your employees understand your team’s purpose.

What is your vision for the long term? What goals do you need to achieve in the next 3 to 6 months? If team members know the vision and goals, they’ll understand how their actions affect the team goals and will be able to make the right decisions.

Your employees understand your team’s values.

Strong values are a powerful guiding force for your company. They describe how employees are expected to behave and the culture you’re building together. They allow you to attract employees who embody those values, not just those who show a minimum level of competence.

Your employees know your team’s principles.

Principles give employees the guidelines for making decisions. They should be stated to provide team members the elements they need to make the day-to-day choices essential for your company’s success.

Your employees are allowed to make mistakes.

See mistakes as a teaching moment, both for you and the employee. Are there any processes you need to implement or modify so that an error isn’t repeated again? Does the employee need to get specific training or coaching that you aren’t providing them already? Do they feel psychologically safe to take risks?

Your employees have all the information they need to make decisions.

It’s a waste to hire intelligent people and not give them the information to make the right decisions. Suppose your employee is just as smart or preferably more intelligent than you. Why aren’t they coming up with similar or even better ideas than you would? Try to understand their interpretation of the situations and why their conclusions aren’t ideal.

Maybe they don’t see the same data as you do? Perhaps you aren’t explaining things as clearly as you think you are? The ideal would be to give employees fully transparent access to most/all business information. But if you aren’t ready for that amount of transparency, at least identify information gaps and close them.

You are setting the right example.

If you’re doing all the above and most of your team still aren’t acting like owners, also look at your own behavior. Are you effectively treating them like owners? Or are you questioning all their decisions or ideas? When you let go of your control, you’ll notice your team members will step up and be confident in taking ownership and responsibilities.

I left Benin at the end of 2020 without a return flight and not many plans. I had spent 2020 waiting for change, and change came from an unexpected direction. Moved to Paris.

Professionally

In my apartment, waiting for more change, I heard about Orbit, a Silicon Valley company, from Josh, the CTO. Looked like the next step, a meaningful mission, and fun founders. A week after my interview, I was in.

First job ever as an employee. Employee #4. A lot of change. The only constant: building software.

I spent the next 8 months contributing to every part of the codebase, building much-awaited features, working with customers, fixing bugs, and handling incidents. Loved it.

But my heart was guiding me towards my zone of genius. And because software is people, I discovered that I preferred growing people and organizations more than building software.

Before Orbit, I was, for 6 years, CTO and VP of Engineering at Etrilabs, where I led the organization’s growth from 0 to more than 10 cross-functional teams.

After a few months at Orbit, I started working on engineering processes, documentation, identifying and addressing blockers to team productivity, hiring and culture. We split the team into two, and my role changed to Engineering Manager.

The next step was found. I don’t have all the answers, but I’m happy to help the now 15 engineers grow and perform as highly as possible. It’s a lovely bunch working remotely from 3 continents, and we’re building great software and culture.

Personally

I got married in November.

This newsletter

Writing helps me structure my thoughts. I’ve maintained several blogs in the past for short periods (Random Thoughts, Les Petites Différences) when I needed to organize my thoughts. This one is about engineering leadership.

I’ll be writing for myself to put words on my past and present experiences, crystalizing my leadership philosophy. If you like it, please subscribe and tag along!