A few months ago, I lost my job as an engineering manager. I was officially told that I was being let go because my team didn’t think I gave good enough feedback and because they didn’t think I had enough technical understanding of the team’s work. Ironically, I got no feedback on this until the day I was being let go, and my performance review from 6 months before had mostly positive. I have told myself that most of the real reason that I was let go was probably the company trying to save money. There was a general push within the company to raise expectations and to not let good enough be good enough, and two engineering teams (neither mine) had recently been combined, leaving an extra manager. But, my confidence still took a big hit, because I’d been under the impression that my team thought well of me and my management. I got mixed messages on the way out the door with my own manager harping on all my shortcomings and my team telling me how much I’d helped them.
In my job search, I could have afforded to take time finding a new job. But, I threw myself into doing it quickly, both to eliminate the uncertainty and to prove to myself that I wasn’t useless. That was probably a mistake. After two months of searching, I got an offer and decided to take it. I wasn’t super excited about the company. The hiring process felt impersonal. But, the recruiter said they were excited about me, the pay was good, and I wanted to be done looking.
A brief history on me: I spent 16 years as an individual contributor. I started out in full stack web dev, moved to iOS dev for a few years, and moved back to web dev for a few years before moving to management. I’ve never had much interest in designing large systems or introducing new technologies. I like to build stuff and solve problems, and I care less than some engineers about how elegantly it’s built. Before moving to management, I held scrum master roles on teams, but never tech lead roles. Shortly before moving to management, I got a promotion to staff engineer, but that was mostly in recognition of my non-technical leadership work. I was told I couldn’t be a manager at that company because I wasn’t technical enough. I’ve been a manager for 3 years total. My first management job was leading a team of front end engineers, my second (the one I lost) was leading a team of full stack engineers with a strong focus on the front end.
It’s probably worth noting that I am female, and I have heard a few times that I am not technically strong enough to do certain things. Despite believing that I’m smart and good at understanding complex topics, I believe I internalized the idea that others are better at me at architecture without seeing potential bias behind it. But, at this point, I don’t know what I’m unskilled at from lack of exposure and genuine lack of interest and what I’m unskilled at out of fear of being bad at something.
My current company does a lot of backend work and uses a serverless architecture. I have a decent understanding of backend, but I’ve never worked at a place with a serverless architecture and I barely understand the term. In the hiring process, there was a screen that consisted of multiple choice questions about AWS, which I don’t really know. I felt like I was taking a test in a foreign language. But, when I later told the recruiter that I found that section tough, the recruiter told me that I got a top score. There was also a system design question that I think I did well with simply because I’ve studied system design questions. I’ve never actually designed systems a distributed system. All of this makes me think I may have interviewed well above my actual abilities. I’ve always been very good at taking tests. I recently saw a hiring panel where people chose to reject an engineering manager candidate because they’re technical skills weren’t strong enough. Someone made the comment that they wanted all of their engineers to be capable of acting as staff level engineers. I don’t think I’m at that level.
To make matters worth, there’s a lot of pressure on my technical leadership skills right now. I have a team that does a lot of manual work to make up for the fact that the systems it supports were never fully built out. Before I joined, the team had 4 people, but two had been lent to other teams for other projects. So, it was essentially 2 engineers, and one of those was beyond burnt out. One of the engineers who was supposed to rejoin the team was fired right after I started because he was stubborn and hard to work with. The other engineer was brought back to the team at that point. But, when the burnt out guy quit a couple weeks later, I was back down to 2 engineers. The two remaining engineers are a junior engineer who has been at the company (and in the working world) for about a year and a senior engineer who has been at the company for less than 6 months. We clearly need to build systems to replace the manual work, and people are looking to me to start planning what those systems are going to look like. But, I’ve been here for about a month, and I don’t think I have the skills or the context to do that.
I have tried asking if I can get an engineer from another team. But, everyone is stretched thin. We’re getting some help from a principal engineer, but it’s only temporary, and he’s on vacation. We’re hiring for my team, and there are two offers out to senior engineers. But, it’s going to take some time to onboard them. I’ve also yet to meet them, because that’s not how our hiring process works. I have seen the interview notes, and they’re positive. But, I’m uneasy about not knowing these people.
I don’t think anyone would blame me if I just quit. But, I don’t really want to go back to job searching right now. I also wonder if this might be a chance to build skills I’ve been lacking.
But, I really worry about doing a terrible job of it and getting fired. I’ve seen two people fired in my first month. One was the aforementioned engineer. In the brief time I knew him, I saw enough to think letting him go might have been a good decision. But, I am fairly certain the firing took him by surprise, and I don’t know if that was his arrogance or poor communication from his previous management. I also saw someone in product who’d been supporting my team let go. I didn’t know the person well, but all of my interactions with them were positive and they seemed like a good ally. I have no idea why they were let go, and I worry that the things I saw them doing that seemed positive were things others thought were a problem.
One of the interview questions the company asks managers is about handling a very productive, but toxic engineer who refuses to change. I’ve seen the rubric, and the only acceptable answer is to let him go. I wouldn’t be here had I not expressed a willingness to let go of someone who was being toxic. But, it leaves me wondering if this is a company that is a little too trigger happy. The rubric doesn’t cover whether or not a manager can judge if someone is really a problem or give them feedback to help them improve. My manager hasn’t given me feedback, good or bad. I could be next and not know it yet. I know I should probably ask my manager for feedback, but I’m afraid that if I have a frank conversation with him, I’ll let on how unprepared I feel and get myself fired sooner rather than later.
I’m having a hard time caring about this job and summoning the motivation to try to do what I need to help turn things around. Do I need to just get back out there and find something else, or do I need to find the motivation to lean in and give it my best shot? Any other suggestions?
Staying at this current job comes with a lot of risks. Say you got fired today, how well could you handle it? Do you have the financial and emotional wherewithal to land on your feet? I’ll reiterate the emotional part - just because you can afford to lose your job for two months doesn’t mean that your emotional health can take it.
If the thought of being fired is terrifying, then I would try to find someplace that is a better fit. You may not be in a good place to take the risks that comes with this position. That’s OK. It’s completely understandable that you aren’t willing or ready to take it on. You can start looking elsewhere.
If you are willing to take risks and push yourself, you may want to stay at this job. In some ways, the turbulence you’re experiencing now will make you a better engineering manager. It sounds like you have a good head on your shoulders, and the advice that @nibblebit gave is pretty much spot on.
Good luck.
If I were fired tomorrow, financially, I’d be fine. I am married, and almost all of my income goes into investments. My husband and I have goals that we won’t hit if we don’t both keep working for another decade, and our safety net would be gone. But, technically, we’d be fine without me earning money indefinitely.
Emotionally, I am sure it would hurt a great deal to be fired. I know shouldn’t tie my self-worth to my job, but on some level, I do. I feel good when I can help people and teams improve, and I feel good about my financial contributions to my family. Losing another management job would cause me to question whether or not I have value to add in that position. I think I have a lot to offer in terms of problem solving skills and compassion, but some times I wonder if I have the right skills and the right focus to really make a positive impact.
When I got laid off several years ago, I had 3 job offers within 2 weeks, and I still managed to take a job that I ended up hating. I left that job after less than 3 months to work with someone I’d worked with before. I know 2 is a small pattern, but I seem to make bad job choices when I’m out of work.
I do think you’re right that there are some opportunities to do some useful things in this job and come out of the experience as a better manager. But, I am mildly terrified that I’ll be out of work on someone else’s terms again. I assume I could land another job, I just worry about finding another job at a place I actually want to work. Part of me is sitting here thinking that if I leave this job after 2-4 months, I can pretend it never happened on my resume. But, if I’m let go in 6 months, I’ll have to explain why I left so quickly, and I still won’t have a management job that I managed to stay at for at least 2 years.
For the moment, I think I’m keeping my shields down, but not quite ready to invest time and energy into job searching. I don’t want to start spending energy that I could be spending making this job work on finding my escape route just yet. But, I’m not ruling out the idea of trying to get out on my own terms while I can just yet.
A lot of what you’re sharing resonates with me and I’m not even unhappy at my current job. I do think part of being a manager, especially one who doesn’t have decades of experience under her belt, is an undercurrent of self-doubt and imposter syndrome.
There’s not really much advice I can give you except that to know you are not alone in how you’re feeling. It’s a struggle, and it doesn’t come naturally, I think, to those who started off as technical engineers.
Something that I’ve seen come through in your writing is compassion and empathy, qualities that are in short supply for leaders. I’m rooting for you, and I selfishly hope you succeed as a leader just so that there’s another success story of an empathetic and technical manager finding her way in the tech industry.
Good luck.
Thanks for this, no matter what path I take from here, I appreciate the words of encouragement!