An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management

Long term, I believe that your career will be largely defined by getting lucky and the rate at which you learn. I have no advice about luck, but to speed up learning I have two suggestions: join a rapidly expanding company, and make your peers your first team.

I’ve had a lot of luck with this format in general, and I think you’ll find it pretty useful as a starting point. That said, the first rule remains true: communication is company-specific.

Tactically, ensure that the work your team is doing is valued: the quickest path out of innovation is to be viewed as a team that builds science projects,

Combine efforts on opportunity and membership, and you will find yourself solidly on the path to an inclusive organization.

Typically, my organizational philosophy is to stabilize team-by-team and organization-by-organization. Ensuring any given area is well on the path to health before moving my focus. I try not to push risks onto teams that are functioning well. You do need to delegate some risks, but generally I think it’s best to only delegate solvable risk. If some

you can always find an opportunity to increase your scope and learning, even in a company that doesn’t have room for more directors or vice presidents.

To increase the number of folks leading this kind of project, I’ve iterated into a structured process that has worked quite well:

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Keep innovation and maintenance together. A frequent practice is to spin up a new team to innovate while existing teams are bogged down in maintenance. I’ve historically done this myself, but I’ve moved toward innovating within existing teams.5 This requires very deliberate decision-making and some bravery, but in exchange you’ll get higher morale