Why I sucked in my first VPE role
Why I sucked in my first VPE role
3 lessons I took to heart
I enjoy this time of the year. Not so much for the festivities of the holiday season, but rather for the quiet moments that this period offers. These days are, to me, quite reflective. One of the, really not surprising, realizations I had recently, is how poor I was as a VP of Engineering earlier on in my career.
When I look back at my first role as VPE, I can clearly see how I combined extreme confidence with extreme incompetence. I was at the peak of “Mount Stupid” . It took me years to make that realization and to get to the root of my incompetence. There were three critical mistakes I did
What got me here isn’t what will take me next
My first critical mistake was linear thinking, or assuming that the skills and strengths that got me to a VPE position are the ones that can make me succeed in this role. Wrong.
I looked at the role, and my predecessor, and assumed that success meant being an engineer’s engineer. The reality is that this is both flat out incorrect, not to mention that I was 100% incapable of doing that. It had been a few years since I actively wrote code, and even if I did, the role isn’t meant to be to write or review more code. It helps to have been a software developer, but the role is more meta than this.
The analogy that comes to mind is that of a football (soccer to the US audience) coach. Carlo Ancelotti (the greatest imho) was a very good player in his heyday. However, presently he doesn’t kick the ball. He’s not even on the pitch. His role is to enable his team to win without kicking the ball. Meta.
Applying this analogy to my role and one can see that my energy should have been dedicated to activities that “enable my team to win”: Focusing, prioritization, org model, hiring, culture and more. The lesson was to try and get to the heart and essence of the role and not just focusing on activities that are part of the role. Essence > Activities. Essence drives the activities that matter.
The ground beneath my feet
If you observe the Dunning-Kruger curve you will notice confidence on the y-axis. I had a lot of that earlier on in my VPE career. The main reason is I was promoted (battlefield promotion) years after working at the same company. I knew the product. I knew the customers. I knew the team. I had proven to be a good (I think) leader in other roles. This new role is an extension of my success. Wrong.
Ironically, this comfort of knowing it all and relying on past experiences or success tends to result in not wanting to change. Why rock the boat if things worked well in the past. The courage to change diminishes with this false sense of comfort. I saw that many years later and wrote the below article about one such experience
Years later when I moved on from this company, I was forced to relearn a lot of the things I took for granted. Joining a new company as VPE will force you to start a-fresh and to prove yourself, both to your team and you, that you are the right person for this job. If you’re feeling cocky, or hints of “I got this”', it’s probably time to move. It’s time to pull the rug from under your feet and spend time learning and growing. Change can be a great motivation for growth.
What does good look like anyways?
When I first became a VPE, I had no prior baseline on what good looked like. My predecessor was a founder and the most prolific engineer in the company (likely in my career). Those though, were not the traits that would result in success - refer to the first failure point. You combine extreme confidence, with a murky understanding of the role and a lack of definition of success and well, you get the peak of stupidity!
The key lesson to me was to seek external knowledge from peers, books and whatever resources I found that can help me understand the gist of the role and how to succeed in it. Get a mentor and when you do, invest in being one. Writing, much like I do on this blog, was and still remains immensely helpful.
I don’t know where I stand today on the Dunning-Kruger curve. Hopefully somewhere east of the “Valley of Despair” I do know that I approach my role today with more zest, gratitude and happiness than ever before. The fine folks at StrongDM still keep me around, so maybe I am doing a few things right. P.S. I am hiring.
Last, but not least. I want to thank everybody that reads this newsletter. I never intended to grow an audience out of it. I hope you find some of what I write useful and relevant.
I’ll be off for the rest of the year and back again writing in early 2023.
Happy holidays :)
Karim
This chart and context very much applies to almost any role. I can speak to the VC side and you have a lot of confidence on certain things when you first enter the job/first join a board. Over time you realize that confidence is just from a lack of understanding :)