Joining startup as their first manager. What should my 30/60/90 look like?
Posted by 20231027@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 24 comments
I am coming from a mid sized to a startups first EM. They have 10 highly experienced engineers, CEO, CTO and CPO.
What are some tips and resources that would help me make this transition?
Thank you.
campbellm@reddit
This seems to me already red-flag level top-heaviness. IMO. $0.02. Caveat etc.
Clyde_Frag@reddit
Ten people is not enough yet to have much of a hierarchy.
campbellm@reddit
that's what I'm thinking too; not including OP that's ~23% devoted to C-level.
Clyde_Frag@reddit
The CEO and CTO are co founders. CPO is really the only potentially superfluous role at that stage.
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CodeToManagement@reddit
First 30 days is meet everyone. Observe and form opinions of what they are doing
Nobody wants the “at my last company we did x” guy on day 1
Talk to the C title guys about what their pain points are and what problems they want you to solve specifically.
60 days is about slow changes - start to make tweaks, build trust with the team, talk to them in 1:1s about what they need etc. by the end of 60 days you should be comfortable with what’s going on and the problems etc
Then 90 days you should have enough info and trust to start making bigger changes
gjionergqwebrlkbjg@reddit
Isn't this timeline more for large corps more than 10 people startups?
CodeToManagement@reddit
Same concepts apply at a startup. You can’t make changes without seeing how things work
First month is 2 sprints. You need to see the problems first hand to start making changes. And people don’t want to listen to the guy who just came in and is now saying everything is bad etc
gjionergqwebrlkbjg@reddit
From my experience at startups you need to be significantly more proactive than this. There's seeing how things work, but you wouldn't last long if you haven't made your way through 1:1s until 2 months in.
wokaflame@reddit
If they are at a point where they said let’s hire an EM, it’s past the everyone hit the ground running on your first week stage.
Get to know the team, detail observation reports to your director or manager, and discuss relevant strategies to your manager should be your first 30 days.
It’s going to be 20 working days with 5 being almost entirely onboarding. That leaves you a bit more than 2 weeks.
Sure you can try small things here and there and establish a process but after 90 days almost sure that you’re still figuring everything out.
Your biggest impact as an em would be in introducing ideas to your devs.
… but, when a startup or company opts to hire an EM to manage “experienced devs”, there is friction between devs and execs or that devs are unable to meet some critical function needed by execs.
CodeToManagement@reddit
I’m not saying don’t have 1:1s from the start or start unblocking people etc.
But jumping in from day 1 just making changes and calling out problems without any understanding of why things work the way they do will just get you pushback and alienate your team.
If week two you jump in and start saying you’re implementing some new process people will just push back because in the early days you don’t even know what the product does or how anything works. Your changes will be seen as just someone wanting to come in and do things to be seen to do things not because you have an understanding of the problem and are fixing it
Drawman101@reddit
Sprint? At a 10 person company? They probably don’t even have a process lol
onafoggynight@reddit
A 10 person team of highly experienced Devs doesn't need an EM. So, probably the first thing is to figure out why they have been hired in the first place.
Drawman101@reddit
Ehhhhh disagree, experienced devs don’t equate to business impact necessarily if they are misaligned.
onafoggynight@reddit
They don't. But we are talking about the first 10 people at a startup. With a "C" Level. If they need a dedicated EM to facilitate things at that scale, they are basically fucked.
onFilm@reddit
Same shit, except in a startup, for the first 30 days, I'd listen in, while joining the team in active bug/feature development and to experience what it's like for them day-to-day.
Jolly-joe@reddit
It depends, some companies are hiring you to more or less branch your last company's culture into the new company
CodeToManagement@reddit
That’s true. And I think that’s the point of discussing the pain points the C suite are having.
If things are on fire sure you need to act quick. But if things are just needing to be moved to a more sustainable process it’s a different mattet
Ivrrn@reddit
schedule weekly 1:1s with no purpose or itinerary, make immediate broad sweeping changes to processes and teams you have no context for, delegate everything and make no effort to understand the product or customers, maybe schedule an end of the first week mandatory fun outing ideally outside of work hours, pick a fight with the biggest meanest looking employee you have to establish yourself and gain respect
aalsaad1@reddit
So basically, the first 30 days should be spent on understanding the team dynamics, the goal setting objectives, etc., and then the second 60 days is when you start building that plan to achieve the goal and be able to push forward those agendas by 90. This is KPI and understanding the trends, and then reiterating across the board.
onafoggynight@reddit
It's a 10 person startup of presumably experienced people. So, why have you been hired concretely? If you don't know, figuring that out is your first 30.
No-Economics-8239@reddit
Every company is different. Especially start-ups. How much management do they currently have? How much do they need? Sometimes, a whirling dervish of chaos is a useful mode for rapid progress. In other ways, it is a scattershot approach when a more targeted and thoughtful journey could be more productive.
Every decision and plan looks different in hindsight. Was it the correct decision at the time? Should you have waited for more information and talent and resources? Would waiting have made it worse?
Thinking there is a clear roadmap to success to begin your new position might be exactly what is needed, or it might be hubris. At best, you try and figure out what you can contribute that will have the best impact. Is that leadership? Organization? Documentation? A boost to morale? Creative freedom or restraint?
And even if you have all the talent and answers, if the existing leadership doesn't see things the same or have different plans and ideas on how best to achieve success, you might need to challenge their assumptions and yours and deal with the politics and relationships and communication required to change hearts and minds. Or maybe the ship is already sinking, and no one has realized it yet.
Drawman101@reddit
Who do you report to? Ask them where they want you to dig in and impact the most. Create observability a metrics around those things to capture how it is today and then implement changes to show those things improving. You shouldn’t be asking us on reddit - ask your CTO or your customers
dkribeiro@reddit
Some books I have read and helped me a lot in my leadership positions: - The staff engineer’s path - The phoenix project - An elegant puzzle - The manager’s path - The surprising science of meetings