When people talk about great management today in 2023, I think they go to this idea of supporting teams and helping them be effective. But part of the piece that's often lost is that you're also responsible for the results or the outputs of the team. So expectation setting is critical. An effective manager is going to set a high bar in terms of what the expectation is. And then they're going to support their people to get there, find out what they need and help them to get to that point.
Our guest today is Marcel Weekes, VP of Product Engineering at Figma and former VP of Engineering at Slack.
In today’s conversation, he unpacks why most startups get it wrong when they uplevel someone from IC engineer to eng manager and unfurls what stellar engineering management looks like at high-growth companies, including:
- Setting appropriate expectations and goals
- Turbocharging the team’s effectiveness
- Delivering high-impact feedback
- Going from a peer to a manager
- What leaders risk when they drag their heels on managing out low-performers
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