Peter Teal famously had this idea and I think Keith Rebois still believes very strongly in it, which is you take your best engineer and that is your engineering manager of the team. So I'd be curious maybe could you steelman it and make the case or explain why maybe there's some merit to that idea. And then maybe kind of loop back on some of the ideas that you shared as to why that's potentially a trap or some of the issues you've seen with that line of thinking in the past.
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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