This past week, I had the opportunity to visit the CMU Pittsburgh campus for a panel talk and experience the Spring Carnival. Apart from that, I also wanted to be back on campus since Pittsburgh is a beautiful city, particularly during this time of the year. As a grad student at CMU, you’re so drowned with work that you don’t get to explore the campus or city. So being back during Carnival weekend, I was able to explore the place with a free mind. Although I still got some stressful flashbacks walking around campus. Furthermore, it was a bit unsettling being on the other side interacting with current students. It felt like it wasn't long ago that I was a student myself, and I remember feeling starry-eyed and impressed by the achievements and confidence of alumni who visited our campus.

At the carnival, there were carnival games, rides, food; and the currency to trade them all - carnival cash. You pay $$ and in return, you get carnival tickets(or, carnival cash). You could spend the tickets inside the carnival wherever you want. At some booths, you win even more carnival cash in form of a prize. You even get a sense of accomplishment and happiness winning all those games and prizes. It is quite easy to lose track of time and get engrossed in the festivities, with hours passing by in what feels like minutes. Imagine at the end of it you have loads of carnival cash, more than you could ever spend, perhaps you’re even proud that you have more of it than anyone else at the carnival. It’s kinda cool. But, you’ve stocked up on carnival cash that loses value as soon as you leave the carnival. 

Carnival cash = a currency that is exclusively generated by the carnival and can only be used within its premises. It holds no value outside.

In the workplace, carnival cash is everywhere. It’s presented in the form of “employee of the month” programs; shoutouts/kudos; a false sense of prestige; badges; fancy titles; a better desk spot. It’s sometimes your manager or team thanking you, but, the output of the work does not land impact; or, “move the needle”; or, lead up to career progression or your goals. It’s alright to take pride in these things. However, it is important to recognize your motivations - are you driven by a reward that’s presented in the form of carnival cash? Or, would you have done something irrespective of the reward?

Here are some more examples of carnival cash,

Running sprint meetings, maintaining sprint boards, and updating tickets et al (especially, if it’s unrelated to your role and projects)
If you find yourself solely responsible for running your sprint meetings, updating tickets, maintaining sprint boards; and if it doesn’t add to your performance/growth packet in a meaningful way(which it usually doesn’t); and, you don’t seem to enjoy it. Consider distributing the workload with your team. Just because you’re getting a lot of kudos from the team; that’s not a good enough reason to continue the work. Instead, consider distributing the load within your team.

A fancy title without a pay increase
It's not uncommon to receive a bigger job title without an accompanying pay increase. While a promotion may come with added responsibilities and recognition, the lack of financial compensation should not be ignored. It's important to have an open and honest conversation with your employer about your expectations and what you feel you deserve. If a pay increase is not possible at the moment, at least have a conversation and concrete plan for the future.

Some vague sense of respect
Over the weekend at CMU, I had the opportunity to chat with several grad students following my panel talk. CMU is renowned for its systems courses, which are highly coveted but also notoriously challenging. Many of the students who spoke with me expressed feeling peer pressure or FOMO to enroll in these difficult courses. While it is true that the reputation of these courses precedes CMU, the reality is that years from now, the specific courses one took will hold little weight in the outside world. It's important to resist the temptation of an artificial desire for respect and reputation. Ultimately, the courses you take should be chosen based on your personal interests and career goals, not on a desire to conform or impress others or garner some vague sense of respect.

Carnival Cash is freely offered everywhere since it costs little to create it and the best part is that it keeps you in the system. It lures you into playing status games. Generally, the actual net value of all of those carnival rewards is nill/zilch/nada. However, the feeling of having more status than your peers is often priceless (but also it doesn’t really mean anything). Whatever you do, know that they make bad trades(since they’re worthless).

Not all carnival cash activities are necessarily bad, some are even necessary and come with the job (minimum tax). What you need is a healthy balance. Some people get caught up in a sea of work that yields nothing but carnival cash. Of course, you need to accumulate some carnival cash to spend while you’re there; however, over-accumulating may not be the best use of your time. Carnival cash activities do not further your career and do not help you achieve your goal. It holds no significance. But, it gives you an illusion of value and a false sense of accomplishment. I have fallen into this trap many times before, especially early in my career; and over and over again, I see people fall into this trap. When offered carnival cash, check your motivations and see if you can ask for something more tangible like cash or stock; alignment with your goals; or, perhaps in some cases you may politely refuse to accept; or redistribute it with others in the system.

Whatever you do, do something because that’s what you want to do - you get a sense of fulfillment or purpose from it or it helps you move closer to your goals; not because you’re motivated by a fake currency that has little value outside of the system that created it. Be intentional and aware of your motivations - next time, don’t simply accept carnival cash, instead take a thoughtful approach and carefully collect, refuse, divert, or re-distribute it elsewhere.

Recommended Reads

Developer Hegemony by Erik Dietrich (this is where I read the concept of carnival cash for the first time)

If you are based in the US, you can connect your local library card with the Libby app to read or listen to these books.

If you have questions or thoughts on the topic, you can tweet them to me or send me a DM on LinkedIn! I’ll tackle reader questions each week (keeping your name and company anonymous), and hey, it’s free! 😎

Check out The Breakout Space to join my career accelerator! You’ll get access to cohort-based courses with principles/frameworks/tactics that go beyond “makes sense in theory” to being proven, practical, and possible. Your current and future self will thank you for it!

Subscribe now

Let’s talk about blind spots. They are both skill gaps/growth areas and your superpowers. Most people when they think about their blind spots, only tend to think of growth areas/skills that are missing. However, blind spots are also about being aware of your superpowers. Think of what are some things that you can do in your sleep, but others have a great deal of difficulty. Knowing your superpowers enables you to play to your strengths.

In my opinion, an effective approach to addressing and managing blind spots involves both recognizing and accepting them while actively working to broaden your knowledge base.

1/  Ask others to spot your blind spots

You can’t know about your own blind spots, otherwise, they wouldn’t be blind spots. However, people around you can see them, and, you just have to give them permission to share feedback and observations (both good and bad) about you. 

Here are some ways I have activated the conversation,

“Hey! In this quarter, I’m trying to improve upon <include some specific areas> as well as identify my blind spots. So, if you observe something, please let me know as soon as you notice.”

And, when someone shares something and I find it fair, I usually tell them one of the following,

“Thank you for letting me know about X/Y/Z!  I’m aware of that and actively working on it. I’d appreciate if you have advice on navigating this. Let’s keep a pulse on this and see how I trend 3 months from now.”

“Thank you for letting me know! This was a blind spot for me. I truly appreciate your bringing this to my attention. I’d rather have someone tell me there’s a spinach in my teeth before many more people have seen it. If you have suggestions/advice to tame this, please let me know. If you were in my place, what would you have done? I’ll keep an eye on this moving forward.”

2/  Share the good things that you observe in others

Due to our tendency to be highly self-critical, we tend to focus more on our weaknesses rather than our strengths. For that reason, we tend to notice others' strengths more than they do themselves, so it's important to acknowledge them when you see them. Although, it's usually necessary to have permission or established trust before providing growth feedback, offering words of genuine praise is free and can help build trust. 

Identifying strengths is a significant lever for growth, especially for new team members or early career professionals. Authentic praise can reinforce a person's self-perception and motivate them to maintain their reputation. In some cases, I take it a step further and make a point of sharing their superpowers with other colleagues.

3/  Find comfort with blind spots & recognize that not knowing is a superpower in itself 

Ignorance is bliss. When I was preparing to come to the US to pursue my master’s degree. I had no idea how hard living in America could be like; or how difficult and different university is here. If I had known all the hardships before I’m not sure if I would’ve taken the plunge. Similarly, I feel much more comfortable doing adventure sports or deep sea diving coz I have little information about deadly small and large sea creatures; or physics. Sometimes, it’s best not to know. It makes it easier to take that plunge. 

Finally, recognize blind spots will always be there! Depending on the situation, you could embrace, identify and bridge the gap, or manage through delegation or leveraging other experts.

Recommended reads

Radical Candor by Kim Scott
Thanks for the feedback by Sheila Heen and Douglas Stone

If you are based in the US, you can connect your local library card with the Libby app to read or listen to these books.

If you have questions or thoughts on the topic, you can tweet them to me or send me a DM on LinkedIn! I’ll tackle reader questions each week (keeping your name and company anonymous), and hey, it’s free! 😎

Check out The Breakout Space to join my career accelerator! You’ll get access to cohort-based courses with principles/frameworks/tactics that go beyond “makes sense in theory” to being proven, practical, and possible. Your current and future self will thank you for it!

Subscribe now

Ethan is a former Amazon VP and an executive career coach. He has nearly three decades of corporate experience, a 15-year-long rewarding career at Amazon where he started as a Sr Manager in 2005 and grew all the way to a VP. 

I have come to know him closely through his writing and videos on LinkedIn, Medium, and YouTube. His mission is to share the lessons learned in his long career to save others from delay and frustration struggling with issues he has been through before.

In the interview below, we cover Ethan’s reflection on his journey, path to VP, career advice, personal sacrifices, and his perspective on career coaching. This is split into three sections,

1. On looking back and retrospecting

2. On career, life, and promotions

3. On personal goals, industry observations, and coaching business

As a heads up, this interview is lengthy and may require multiple readings to fully absorb. Plus, the advice is so valuable and timeless that you'll probably want to come back to it again and again! Let’s dive in..

On looking back and retrospecting

1/ Looking back at your career, knowing what you know now, what would you change or do differently?

There are of course many things I would change, so I will try to focus on just a few.

First off, I would seek mentorship and coaching much earlier.  I was lucky to have good managers who served as mentors in some companies, but I really had no one explain to me what a career path looked like and how to go about growing into one.  I think many people are like me - they simply take a job and work hard, hoping for good results.  But hope is not a strategy.  If I had it to do over again I would seek out a diverse set of career mentors much earlier.  I believe I could have gone much further, much faster, with better guidance.  

The other thing I would change would be to have more confidence and comfort that I would get where I was going.  I spent a lot of my career until the last few years worried that I would not succeed.  Now that I am older and I have seen many careers unfold, I realize that most professionals end up well to do with good retirement options.  I worked extremely hard and missed out on some other things in life because I felt I had to get top marks at every turn to keep moving forward.  I think I could have taken more time to enjoy life along the way and still basically had the same success.

These two points really go together.  You’ve heard of working smarter, not harder?  I needed the guidance in my first point, better mentorship, so that I could work smarter, rather than what I did, in the second point, which was to work harder.  These things are what I would change.

2/ What were some instances of personal setbacks or failure situations at work? How did you overcome those?

I was laid off twice in the middle of my career.  In both cases, the root cause was the same.  While the two companies were struggling startups, my personal behavior as a leader within them made me expendable.  Specifically, I was very critical of other leaders when I believed they were wrong.  I was quite willing to be outspoken.  This trait has been an asset in my career when I have been right, but not when I have been wrong.  In these cases, I was only seeing one aspect of a peer leader’s performance.  I was missing other pieces of what they were doing that the CEO above me valued.  So, while I had some good points about part of the situation, I was wrong overall.  However, it was not being wrong that got my name added to the list of people the shrinking companies no longer needed.  Rather, it was my abrasive behavior.

After the second layoff, it took me a while to find a new job.  That gave me a good amount of time to ask myself, “how did I get into this situation?”  With introspection, I realized that it was my own conduct.  Thus, I set out to change.  As many of you may realize, even if you can see what you are doing wrong it is not always easy to change deeply ingrained habits.  But over time I became a much calmer, more considerate leader.  I still speak my mind, but I am careful to ask questions and think very carefully before doing so.

My final point - though technically I was part of a layoff in each case, in many ways I was fired.  Yet I have had a wonderfully successful career.  If you are willing to learn and adapt, even adverse traits (like mine) and being fired (like me) will not hold you back in the end.

3/ How was your transition from senior engineering management to managing an entire business unit? What new skills did you learn? What skills did you have to purposely leave behind?

I decided to transition from engineering leader to General Manager (GM) on purpose.  Our company had bought a very small startup.  I asked if I could lead it as a way of leading an entire division, even if it was tiny.  That startup made $4 million a year.  For some, $4 million will seem like a big number.  But at the time Amazon was maybe a $40 billion company, so I was responsible for 0.01% of the revenue.  It gave me a safe place to practice and learn.

I had to learn two key new skills.  One was financials.  I had never really cared about the dollars and cents.  I had focused on building technology.  But now I had to try to understand where our profits and expenses came from.  The second skill was product expertise.  Rather than just build what someone else asked for, I had to learn how to decide what to build and what not to build.  This second skill came somewhat naturally to me and we made some good product choices.  The first skill, the financials, took me a long time and I am still no expert.

The biggest thing I had to leave behind was a classic bias for engineering.  I think many people from all sorts of fields leave college with a belief that what they do is the most important part of a business.  The engineers believe that the technology is key.  The product people think it is the design.  The financial people believe that none of it can happen without the money.  They marketing and sales people know that no business survives without customers.  In truth, all parts are needed.  I had to leave behind a pro-technology bias to realize that sometimes the best solution for the business might be to change the products name and positioning in the market or to fight for different business terms, not to build more clever features.

4/ What were crucible moments(step function change in your behavior/skillset or defining moment in your career) for you at work?

Certainly, the last two answers were step changes.  Getting let go and realizing that I needed to change as a person was a huge step change.  So was moving into general management. 

The other crucible moments often came from crisis situations.  I actually love crisis management, when a system fails or a customer is unhappy or a critical product has to hit an urgent deadline.  I love these moments because everything else drops away.  Suddenly all your boring meetings can wait, as can going to the gym to work out and even sleeping.  You grab some cold pizza, get in a room with your team, and figure out how to handle things.

You learn the most the fastest in a crisis.  You have to make quick decisions and that teaches you to be decisive, take risks, and take action.  Sometimes those actions fail in spectacular fashion, and nothing teaches as quickly as rapid feedback and pain.  But almost everything is solvable with hard work.  So when I or my team fell short, we were almost always able to work through it.

Thus my advice would be, take risks, be bold, get yourself in trouble, and then get yourself out of it.   The way through the crisis is forward.  If you get paralyzed with fear you will be left behind.

5/ Did you ever feel like an imposter at work? How did you manage that?

I felt like an imposter lots of times.  Amazon’s leadership team is wicked smart.  When I was promoted to Vice President in that large company, my peers were all incredible people.  Smart, hard working, and talented.

I ultimately managed it in two ways.  First, I accepted that I was not the best.  I was good, perhaps even very good, but not the best and that was OK. Second, I realized that my self worth did not come from being the best.  Humans have intrinsic self worth.  They have value because they are unique, living, thinking beings.  I learned to stop comparing myself to others and to instead simply look at my own conduct.  As long as I gave my best, that would be good enough for me.  And as it turned out, it was also good enough for others.

On career, life, and promotions

1/ How have you kept your managers accountable for career growth?

I developed a simple saying.  Employees would come to me and ask, “why didn’t you promote me?”  I would tell them, “because you did not earn it.”  I would then go on to say, “remember, you need to own your own career.  If I owned your career, it would be called my career, and I already have one.”  A manager’s job is to give employees opportunity and guidance. I tried to do that for my team members and many of them were promoted.  For myself, I realized I had to ask my managers for what I wanted.

In at least a couple of situations, I had to have very tense discussions with a manager.  In those discussions, I found very polite but clear ways to let them know that I was willing to quit and go elsewhere if I needed to do so.  Luckily, in those cases, the managers determined that my services were valuable enough to retain, which means that I got what I wanted in return.

In other cases, I was able to form deeply cooperative relationships with managers. I would do everything I could to help them and they helped me in return.  I also was able to do this downward with some of my best employees.

The way this question is framed presupposes an adversarial relationship, how have I kept managers accountable?  The truth is that I did that through careful, tough conversations when needed, but far more often I was able to build relationships with managers such that they wanted to help me grow.  While you need the former skill to be tough when you must, it is far, far better to use the latter skill.  Help your manager.  Be worthy of investment.  A good manager wants to see you grow.  If you have to be tough, you are already in a bad spot.

2/ How did you pick your own managers?

One time I spent six months searching for a new manager.  After those six months, I took a role under the best person I had found.  Six weeks later he was reorganized to a new role and I got a new boss.

Sometimes you can pick your managers, but you cannot always expect it to last.  You need to get good at adapting to your managers.  This topic is in such high demand in my coaching community online that I just released a whole two-hour course on how to manage up successfully.  While managing up well will not turn a tyrannical boss into a great one, it will help you survive until you can flee.  And with any better boss, it will help you become an ally.

As for choosing bosses, here is my secret - first, if you can, pick someone you already know.  If you cannot, then check their references.  Ask to talk to people on their team.  Find someone on LinkedIn who knows them.  Bosses check references on you… why would you not find a way to check references on them?  The only real way to pick a good boss is to find someone you trust who can tell you if they really are good.  So put in the networking legwork and do that.  Then manage up well.

3/ Going all the way back in your career when you started working in the industry, which promotion was the hardest for you?

“Hard” can mean two things here.  One type of hard is getting the promotion.  Certainly, that was the promotion to Vice President at Amazon.  The bar for that is incredibly high and the competition very stiff.  I worked towards it for years.  My boss was completely on my side, helping me every step of the way and it still took several years.

The other type of “hard” is learning to do the job well.  For me, I would say each of my difficult promotions were times when I had to learn a new function.  These were not promotions in the sense of a raise and a title, but in the sense of scope.  I was assigned new tasks I knew nothing about.  One time I got a call at 8 PM at night that someone at our company had been let go and I needed to take over three teams the next morning.  One of those teams was a security team at a business I knew hackers often targeted.  The business had been successfully hacked before.  That was very hard.  Taking over something I knew nothing about but knew was an immediate threat.  You do this by throwing yourself into learning and by having or hiring good people.  In that case, the security team we had was really strong.  All I needed to do was support them and they kept us safe.

4/ What personal sacrifices did you have to make to get where you got? And, did you find yourself making more of those as you moved up your career ladder? How did you scale yourself in your personal life as you continued rising in your career?

This question is pretty personal, but if my truth will help people, then it is worth sharing.  During my executive career, I was divorced.  Eventually, my ex-wife made a decision to move to a different state, taking my daughter, then 9, with her.  I had a choice, of following her to stay near my daughter or of becoming a long-distance dad.  The place I would be moving if I moved had decent career options, but not as good as where I was.  But, I suspected (and a few years later was proven right) that she would move again.  That second place had few career options and my life would be much different if I had made those moves.

I could have tried to fight a messy legal battle to keep my ex-wife from moving away.  I decided not to do that and as a result, we have always had a cooperative parenting relationship even if we no longer get along as a couple.

I could have moved.  I decided that I would not allow my life to be controlled by where someone else chose to move and when they did it.  However, this choice did cost me a lot of closeness and involvement with my daughter’s life.  We flew back and forth on holidays several times a year and spoke on the phone (in the old days) and by Facetime every week, but honestly, no one-hour calls and one-week visits can replace being there every day.

Was this “required” to get to executive?  Well, I can tell you that in the pain from the divorce, I threw myself into work and during those years I was single I was able to put in enormous amounts of hours.  So, I cannot tell you it is required.  I can tell you that the choice not to move (and the cost that came with it) probably got me where I ended up.

I would not be human if I did not ask myself, “was it worth it?”  Of course, I ask myself this.  The truth is, I cannot know what might have happened if I had moved to stay near my daughter.  Maybe today we would have a much closer, deeper relationship.  Or maybe I would have resented the damage to my career and as a result, lost the relationship we do have as well.  We cannot know.  But the question is a good one.  It is incredibly tough to meet the demands of executive roles and be a good parent. 

One founder and CEO I know said this when I was creating my course on how to become an executive:

“You should tell them that if they do not have an almost unhealthy love for the work, they shouldn’t try.” 

He understood that for most people it takes a near-damaging level of obsession to reach the top.  Now, he remains married to his college girlfriend with two great kids.  But his personal price was 10 years of sleeping only with the help of the sleeping drug Ambien to get there.

5/ In a few lines, what’s needed for someone who starts as a technical IC to go from,
i) Jr to Sr
ii) Sr to Principal
iii) Principal to Director
iv) Director to VP

The general answer to all of these is the same. It is a five-step process I call the Magic Loop:

1. Do your current job well.  Find out if you are by asking for feedback and then addressing it rather than making excuses

2. Ask your boss what more you can do to help

3. Do it (do it well)

4. Go back and ask how you can do something with your boss that will also help with your career goals.  Bosses you have truly helped will help you in return.  If they do not, leave.

5. Repeat this loop.

I have a YouTube video that explains this in more detail, but this recipe is the key for every promotion.

On personal goals, observations, coaching business

1/ You left your corporate career to pursue your own coaching business. Did you ever get a career coach for yourself? If so, at what level and how did it help you?

I have had three career coaches.  One when I became a Director at Amazon, one when I became a Vice President, and one when I was Executive Vice President at Twitch (an Amazon subsidiary).

All three coaches helped me tremendously.  For what it is worth, I’ve also seen a therapist and would tell those who are full of either pride that they do not need that kind of help or fear that others will judge you for being weak to get over it.  We all grow up with assorted mental baggage from our younger lives that hold us back from greatness.  The coaches helped me with the skills I needed, in my case mostly soft skills.  The therapist helped me with the peace of mind and inner reserves of confidence and energy to use the new skills to get results.

2/ What are your personal goals now? 

To pay forward the good fortune in my life to others.  I am an Ohio farm kid who has succeeded far beyond what I ever thought was possible.  I am lucky enough right now to have everything I need and more.  So, I see it as my responsibility to help as many people as I can.  That is why I’ve spent over an hour on a Saturday evening typing up several pages of answers here and why I have told painful stories like the loss of daily contact with my daughter.  Because the last goal I have in my life is to help others.

3/ What are some blindspots you see in early/mid-career product and engineering people?

I’ve mentioned these above but they are worth repeating.  Fearing that you will not succeed.  If you work hard and smart, over time you will likely have and get everything you want.  Second, for engineers or product people, failing to appreciate other disciplines.  It is a fun sport to make fun of non-technical people.  There is a joke that says that the difference between sales and marketing is that at least marketing knows that they are lying.  Laugh at the joke if you want, but realize that all of those functions actually have a ton of value.  Learn to see, capture, and enhance that value.  You cannot be good at everything, so let other people be great at other things and together you can soar.

4/ What are areas where coaching really helps? And, what are some areas where coaching may not be the best tool?

Coaches help with two things:

1. Seeing your blind spots.  They are not wrapped up in your career, your family, or your situation.  They can analyze without emotions and see things you cannot

2. The pathway ahead.  A coach ideally has experience in the path you want to walk, but even if they do not, they have seen dozens or hundreds of other people on that path.  As a result, they have seen what does and does not work to achieve each career goal in many different circumstances.  By definition, your next career step is new to you.  Why would you not talk to someone who has seen that step take many different ways, successfully and unsuccessfully?

Coaches are not magical and should not be expected to “fix” things.  You have to do the work.  So where coaches are not the best tool is to try to fix some symptom when you are not ready to work on the root cause.  Earlier I talked about needing to admit I was abrasive and critical.  A coach might be able to point this out, but if I was not in a place to accept the input it would not have helped.  The place where a coach is useless is to help you with something someone else, like a boss, has told you to work on but that you do not believe is important.

5/ What is the best way for people to get in touch with you?

Via LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ethanevansvp/

My website: www.ethanevans.com

My career courses: https://ethan-evans.mykajabi.com/

On behalf of everyone reading this, I’d like to thank Ethan. I’m truly grateful for his generosity in sharing his time and expertise. If any of this resonates, follow Ethan and check out his website.

If you have questions or thoughts on the topic, you can tweet them to me or send me a DM on LinkedIn! I’ll tackle reader questions each week (keeping your name and company anonymous), and hey, it’s free! 😎

Check out The Breakout Space to join my career accelerator program! You’ll get access to cohort-based courses with principles/frameworks/tactics that go beyond “makes sense in theory” to being proven, practical, and possible. Your current and future self will thank you for it!

Subscribe now

Due diligence is a trust-building exercise!

In the previous post, I shared my top three observation-based parameters to identify a great manager. In this post, I’m sharing my top questions to ask before joining a team and how to bring your manager along in your due diligence. It may sound out of place reading it in an environment like this where job offers are far and few! However, you can still apply some of these to your existing job, and remind yourself of this exercise when you finally land that offer.

Before joining a team, take the time to do your due diligence and ask for your manager’s help in that. You’re going to spend your valuable time here, so there’s no point rushing into a decision. Right before you join a new team is also the best time to ask questions, since no one expects you to know anything. They don’t read too much into your questions or have any preconceived notions about you or your knowledge. So, ask whatever you need to in order to fully understand what you’ll be doing and whether you’re a good fit. 

You can only be so effective in doing this yourself in the background. So, you should bring your manager along into the process. Most great managers will be supportive and help you land a decision. However, once they’ve made an offer, they’re also incentivized to close the position asap. This may lead them to create a false sense of urgency and urge you to accept on a quick timeline. In a situation like that, recognize your bargaining power. Remember that they invested time and energy in finding someone qualified, they can wait for you to complete your due diligence. Talk to them respectfully, put in a sincere request, and proceed. 

Here’s usually what I say,

“Hey manager, I’m excited about this opportunity due to <X reason>. I’d love to speak with a few people on the team to learn more. I understand the urgency, however, I see myself being here for at least <X years>. So, I’d rather take some time upfront instead of rushing through this. Is that reasonable?”

The Due diligence process

1/ Talk to other people reporting to your manager

Before joining the team, ask your potential manager to connect you with others on the team, so, you can learn from their day-to-day experience. Build trust with them, ask probing questions, and try to go a few layers deep beyond the “sell call”.
When I was joining a new team at Microsoft, I was backfilling a role. I asked my manager to put me in touch with the person leaving. I talked to them about the team, the org, everyone’s working styles, where they hit the wall, and what each executive cared about. Since they were leaving anyway, they didn’t sugarcoat anything. That due diligence helped me prepare and better understand the culture of the team and the context behind some product decisions. 

2/ Look for signs of care, empathy, and psychological safety

I like to see signs of how much a manager cares about their team. When talking to their direct reports, I ask them about their experience navigating tough times with their manager.
I also look at the type of people they have managed before. For example, it is important for me to know if they have managed an immigrant before and that I will get the support needed in immigration-related matters. If they lack experience in managing immigrants, I want to at least ensure that they’re open to learning unique aspects of managing immigrants which involves extra paperwork, and an understanding of internal policies. Immigrants often need their manager’s support to make a case in immigration matters; and may have specific circumstances leading them to fly far back home in case of an emergency. I’ve been incredibly lucky to have the support of my previous managers. It was due to their support I was able to navigate the EB1A application process smoothly.

3/ Look at their track record and past experience

Ask your manager about the last time they promoted someone at least at your level, the average tenure of folks on their team, and the range of levels they have managed. Depending on the role, level, and company, it may also be worth asking about their experience of firing people on their team.

4/ Learn about their aspirations

A manager that will go places will take you places. Learn about their career aspirations and see if it aligns with yours. It is far easier to get the right support for your goals if your manager also has similar goals.

5/ Ask about quantitative metrics from internal surveys

Most companies have a periodic employee survey that rates the manager, team, and org. You can ask your manager how they scored in internal surveys, and what steps they’re taking towards improving. I haven’t ever asked any of my managers about this because the other indicators were enough to decide. However, there’s no harm in asking for this data if that’s what you need to decide.

Ultimately, you cannot evaluate people just on the basis of checklists. You’ll also develop a gut instinct about the person. Don’t discount that! If something concerns you, it’s best to directly address it with your manager rather than pinning your decision based on assumptions or a scorecard.

If you’ve found a great manager, express your gratitude and keep in touch with them! However, if are caught in a rut with your manager, understand what you can learn from this and make sure to do your due diligence the next time. If all else fails, don’t fall into sunk cost fallacy and move on.

If you have questions or thoughts on the topic, you can tweet them to me or send me a DM on LinkedIn! I’ll tackle reader questions each week (keeping your name and company anonymous), and hey, it’s free! 😎

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As an employee, one of the biggest career decisions you’ll make is picking the right manager for you. A manager is often the sole difference between an enjoyable, fulfilling job and an unpleasant one. Over the years, I held my own fair share of okay, good, and exceptionally great managers.  I have also keenly observed other managers through my interactions with peers, stakeholders, mentees, and mentors. Throughout my career, I found it reasonably easy to distinguish between a good and a not-so-good manager. However, it took me a while to build the muscle for identifying a great manager that aligns with my ambitions and aspirations. 

So, what sets a great manager apart from a good one?  Good managers are just good. However, great managers are a rare find and extremely special! A great manager is a career ally not just for the time that you worked together, but rather throughout your career. They will often continue to coach, mentor, and advocate for you. So, be intentional about picking the right managers. Sometimes they fall into your lap, other times, you have to seek them out. Of course, there is no absolute measure when evaluating people and relationships, however, applying thoughtful filters can improve the odds of having a fulfilling and rewarding career. 

The Smell Test 

Here are my top three observation-based parameters for evaluating managers,

1/ When a great leader gets promoted, people around them get promoted.

Great leaders rise along with their teams. A key part of the people management role is career development of the team. I like to see how deliberate managers were about growing people at all levels. And, that they were not just about growing the team size. Promotions are often a proxy for growth and career development. I’m wary of managers who grow without their team; a good tell is when they’re the only one to secure one or two or sometimes three promotions for themselves, without promoting members of their team. When I notice this pattern, I try to understand the context and reasoning behind it and decide accordingly. 

2/ When people follow a leader

People follow great managers. Since, great managers are often rare finds, once someone finds them, they tend to stick with them. They move when the manager moves, oftentimes, with them to the new place. I have seen this happen a lot at Amazon. This shows that they built trust with their team in the past. Unsurprisingly, great managers often have great managers themselves, and they have an amazing rapport and a long-standing relationship with their own managers.

3/ When managers are also exceptional individual contributors

Some of the best managers I have worked with are exceptional individual contributors (IC) themselves. They nailed both the art and science of people management combined with hands-on skills. This helps me lean on them for blindspots and working alongside them allows me to learn from their expertise and develop my own abilities. They were able to operate at all levels of detail. They knew when to step in and when to zoom out. They are able to just as easily step into the role of their direct reports as well as at least partially in the role of their own managers in case of extended time-offs or contingency plans. 

If you’ve found a great manager, express your gratitude and keep in touch with them! However, if you’re caught in a rut with your current manager, understand what you can learn from this. Ask yourself if you really understand their goals, working, and management style. Sometimes, we are too quick to come to a conclusion. It might help to have an honest conversation with them. If your manager doesn’t know about your goals, aspirations, and concerns, they cannot help you. If all else fails, don’t fall into sunk cost fallacy and move on.

Recommended Reads

Before identifying a great manager, it is imperative to have an understanding of the responsibilities and functions of a manager. Here are some of the books that helped me better understand the role of a manager,
High Output Management by Angy Grove
The Making of a manager by Julie Zhuo

If you are based in the US, you can connect your local library card with the Libby app to read or listen to these books.

If you have questions or thoughts on the topic, you can tweet them to me or send me a DM on LinkedIn! If you enjoyed reading this, you may be interested in my posts on Medium and LinkedIn.