The four buckets before a career change 💎 Issue #80

Plus: raising kids with kindness in mind and the good kind of fuel for teams.

Happy Friday👋

What’s up? 🧭

You’ll notice a pattern in the links below and in some of the past issues.

I’m trying to evaluate what’s next for my career and there are a lot of clues pointing in the direction of joining what I currently do with leadership. That’s where many of the articles about engineering management, teams, and leadership come from.

You don’t need to love what you do, but it doesn’t hurt that what you do is about stuff you’ve been sharing in a newsletter for 80 issues. It’s something I do in my free time for pleasure: reading and writing about how people and teams can reach their full potential, while accomplishing the goals they aimed for.

I’m researching what companies look for in people to fill this kind of role and putting their skills and responsibilities into four buckets, according to how I see myself doing it.

I want to visualize how much of what a future me would enjoy at this different career vs how competent I would be at it.

I ended up with many items in each bucket, but probably not enough on the bottom two. If I have any biases those would for sure be in considering myself more competent than I really am at some of the required skills.

I also don’t have a clear answer to what should be my approach to those things that are part of the job that are not enjoyable and you are not good at them. Seeing who could tackle those actions for you is one approach, but it doesn’t feel quite right. The right answer here might be, not surprisingly, leadership.

A great leader will see you struggling, and frustrated by facing a challenge that you don’t feel capable of surpassing and lead. After all, those might be the most common symptoms of necessary growth.

A great leader will not necessarily tell you what to do in clear terms like in those other three buckets, but maybe help investigate what to do to move those items out of the “outsource” bucket. Maybe you can re-frame a given task into giving it meaning, or find someone in the organization who is enthusiastic about it that can share it with you, or even, this leader can be there while you struggle to offer support and insights to improve your process.

This could go on and it’s better to stop this rabbit hole here. I think I discovered another layer where leaders can have a meaningful impact: it’s with what people are considering to, maybe, outsource.

And now, the best things I found on the Internet this week.

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New to me 💡

Stop Trying to Raise Successful Kids | 8 min read

🎗 “If you survey American parents about what they want for their kids, more than 90 percent say one of their top priorities is that their children be caring. This makes sense: Kindness and concern for others are held as moral virtues in nearly every society and every major religion. But when you ask children what their parents want for them, 81 percent say their parents value achievement and happiness over caring. Kids learn what’s important to adults not by listening to what we say, but by noticing what gets our attention.”

The Ten Commandments of an Engineering Manager | 10 min read

🎖 “You’re not the engineering manager because you’re the best developer, or because you’re the best at gathering functional requirements, or anything that your team needs to do really. That should be the people on your team. Leave the ego behind, you’re not there to teach them how you’re better than them. If anything, some of them will educate you daily on why they’re the real MVPs. You on the other hand? You are great at managing them, which is why you’re the manager.”

How to hold employees accountable without micromanaging them | 10 min read

🖼 “True team accountability is not about checking in on your team more or applying stricter deadlines. True team accountability is about doing everything you can to create the clearest possible picture for what needs to get done and why, and sharing as much context as possible to achieve those expectations.”

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Please help me grow this newsletter! I’d love if you shared it with your more curious friends.

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A most aiding tweet ⚖

Ethan Mollick @emollick

Another old decision-making trick backed by science: flipping a coin to make a decision you are unclear about & then realizing which way you hoped it would land. Coin flips (or die rolls) act as useful decision aids, as they catalyze good decision-making by revealing feelings.

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This week in a gif ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜

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High note ⚡

This issue cover picture comes from here.

Last issue most clicked link was I blew $720 on 100 notebooks from Alibaba and started a Paper Website business.

I hope you enjoyed these last minutes as much as me putting this together.

You can also show some love by clicking that tiny ❤️ at the top of the email. It would help spread the word. Or leave a review here ⭐. Or you can provide candy bars 🍫.

If you are one of those friends and someone shared this with you, you are in luck, buy them a beer next time you are together, and meanwhile, you can subscribe to This Week’s Worth here:

Until next week,

Filipe