Cap Watkins was most recently VP of Product Design at Lattice, and previously he's held design leadership roles at Amazon, Etsy, BuzzFeed, and Primary.com. Cap started his management career as an experiment after experiencing bad management himself, deciding to do the opposite of everything he'd hated from previous managers. On today's show we chat about the basics of great management, why design lost its craft over the past decade, how senior ICs influence without authority, and how to make any project exciting enough to build your reputation.
Timestamps:
- 02:16 – Cap's intro
- 06:46 – Management basics: transparency, showing up, and treating people like adults
- 09:24 – Should you try management or stay on the IC track?
- 12:08 – How to avoid being a bad manager when you're starting out
- 19:24 – Building divisive opinions and culture through transparency
- 20:26 – How senior ICs influence without formal authority
- 25:40 – How design lost its craft and became too strategic
- 28:28 – The hiring crisis: from 1 in 10 to 1 in 100 pass rates
- 36:40 – Making boring projects exciting
- 44:14 – End of show questions
Connect with Cap
LinkedIn
Selected links from the episode
Managing Humans, by Rands
Turn The Ship Around, by Lt. David Marquet
The Making of a Manager, by Julie Zhou
Design Meets Business