Podcast appearances and mentions of jean hsu

Sometimes among all the sprints,  the pressure to ship faster,  tools to measure lines of code written,  it seems like we as an industry forget a simple fact: developers are knowledge workers, not robotsTo remind us what it means to be a human, we invited some of the most empathetic engineering leaders we know to Interact and asked them to sit on a panel together. The conversation that followed is one of the most insightful and relevant conversations we've heard all year. Whether you are an IC, manager or manager of managers, we promise this conversation will help you become a more empathetic leader and colleague.  Today's episode of Dev Interrupted features Kelly Vaughn, Director of Engineering at Spot AI; Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range; and Lena Reinhard, an engineering leadership coach.  Show NotesWatch all of Interact on the Dev Interrupted YouTube channel Learn about the power of Continuous Merge with gitStream Join the Dev Interrupted Discord Want to try LinearB? Book a LinearB Demo and use the "Dev Interrupted Podcast" discount code.

In this episode of Lead Time Chats, Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, chats with Range co-founders Jen Dennard and Dan Pupius about how companies can roll-out intentional and effective hybrid work policies.Jean, Jen, and Dan discuss:Some of the more effective hybrid return-to-office rollouts we've heard about, and others that…could be better.Why in-office work may not actually create more serendipitous interactions for most employees.What companies should pay attention to when implementing or iterating on a hybrid office policy.Companies that are technically “remote-friendly” but have a reputation of not being great for remote employee career development.

In this episode of Lead Time Chats, Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, chats with Nadia De Ala, Founder of Real You Leadership, about managing up in a hybrid work environment.Nadia and Jean discuss:What holds people back from managing upNot limiting yourself to managing up - think about managing up, down, and all aroundHow to get around the fear or taking up space and advocating for yourselfManaging up with an absent or even toxic managerAsking powerful open-ended questions to build a deeper relationship with your manager and teammatesHow remote work can make managing up easier…or more difficult

In this episode of Lead Time Chats, Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, chats with Douglas Ferguson, Founder of Voltage Control, about feedback and performance conversations in a remote work environment.Douglas and Jean discuss:When a large meeting shouldn't be a large meeting at all — and how to address meeting FOMOWays to break down larger meetings into smaller group breakouts to include everyone in discussionsAvoiding the one-to-many broadcast of information in live meetings, instead opting for async recorded Looms that people can watch on their own.How to make change at your organization when you don't feel like you're in a position to do so.

Following engineering stints at Google, Pulse and Medium – as both an IC and tech lead – Jean Hsu stepped away from the codebase to help coach others on how to navigate their own transition into management. In this conversation from our archives, Jean shares the struggles encountered in her own move to management, the importance of psychological safety in the workplace, and how to fill the leadership voids she sees in today's tech landscape.Jean is now VP of Engineering at Range.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode of Lead Time Chats, Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, chats with Joaquín Roca, Founder of Minerva, about feedback and performance conversations in a remote work environment.Joaquín and Jean discuss:Why it's important to give feedback that's frequent, timely, continuous, and focused on impact.The general rule of thumb to give 5 pieces of positive feedback for each piece of constructive feedbackCadences and structures to support regular feedbackContinuous feedback ensures that nothing in a performance review is a surpriseHow to give feedback on work performance when teammates are dealing with personal struggles

In this episode of Lead Time Chats, Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, chats with Brooks Scott, Founder of Merging Path Coaching, about how to foster diversity, equity, and inclusion on remote and distributed teams.Brooks and Jean discuss:How companies commonly start and end their DEI efforts with hiring more womenWhy it's important to prioritize diversity and inclusion beyond the gender binaryThe inclusion challenge as companies return to office and under-represented people face in-person micro-aggressionsHow to build a foundation of trust in a relationship so that you can have the hard conversations when neededDifferent ways companies and leaders can respond to terrible news events

In this episode of Lead Time Chats, Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, chats with Fred Plais, CEO at Platform.sh, about setting up a globally distributed team for success.Fred and Jean discuss:The many advantages of hiring a globally distributed team, including round-the-clock support all during office hoursThe importance of spending limited synchronous time very intentionallyLimiting individual teams to 2 timezones (i.e. Europe and America) to maximize team overlapHow a globally distributed team empowers Platform.sh build a product that's used globally

In this episode of Lead Time Chats, Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, chats with Steph Mann, Co-Founder of At Your Core, about reinforcing team values in remote and hybrid teams.Steph and Jean discuss:The risk of not taking the time to codify values as your company growsChoosing values that are authentic and not overly aspirationalHow to reinforce values (beyond beautiful posters and stickers) with rituals, regular check-ins, and external acknowledgmentThe shadow side of values and how values can be misconstrued

In this episode of Lead Time Chats, Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, chats with Andy Detskas, most recently Design Leadership at Strava, about navigating conflict on remote teams.Andy and Jean discuss:Bringing an experience design mindset to meeting designHow to build an inclusive culture on a hybrid teamHow to mitigate the risk of remote employees feeling like second-class citizensTaking into different cognitive approaches when planning for meetingsHow inclusive teams and meetings lead the way to inclusive design and products

In this episode of Lead Time Chats, Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, chats with Suzan Bond, Leadership Consultant and Executive Coach, about navigating conflict on remote teams.Suzan and Jean discuss:How conflict shows up differently on remote teams (more conflict avoidance than outbursts)Being curious about areas of disagreement, rather than being terrified of conflictDesigning upfront how you want to be in disagreement in your work relationshipsHow simply naming the tension or disagreement can help create a path forwardWhy you should avoid resolving conflict through a third party - and how to coach people to speak directly to each other first

In this episode of Lead Time Chats, Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, chats with Jori Lallo, co-founder of Linear, about working effectively across different timezones.Jori and Jean discuss:How to divide projects and work across timezones to reduce overheadUnexpected ways to connect socially while working on a distributed teamBenefits of spanning vastly different timezones (no overnight on-call!)Figuring out how to spend async/sync time effectively 

In this episode of Lead Time Chats, Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, chats with Hong Quan, owner of Hire Haus, about building remote teams.Hong and Jean discuss:the main challenges in hiring for and building remote teamshow companies and hiring managers think differently about hiring for remote teamshow to fill in the gaps so that remote hiring doesn't feel isolating or impersonalwhat candidates are looking for and what's important to them as the work environment has changed over the last few years

In this episode of Lead Time Chats, Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, chats with Najeeb Khan, founder of TeamLand, about team-building and belonging.Najeeb and Jean discuss:why it's important for people to have a sense of belonging on their teamthe challenges most teams are facing these days in terms of team connectedness and belongingthe biggest differences in fostering belonging on a remote team vs a co-located onewhat leaders or managers can do to build belonging into their culture

In this episode of Lead Time Chats, Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, chats with Anna Sulkina, Director of Engineering at Twitter, about the parallels between endurance spots and software engineering.Anna and Jean discuss:The many parallels between long-distance running and software developmentHow important prioritizing recovery and recharge time isUnderstanding the why in the short-term (why you're running a race, or why you're building something in a two-week sprint)Understanding the why in the long-term (an active lifestyle, or what you want out of your tech career)Using retros as a way to debrief in life, not just in software development

In this episode of Lead Time Chats, Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, chats with Pat Kua, engineering leadership coach, about the different flavors of tech leadership.Pat and Jean discuss:Different archetypes of tech leadership, including engineering managers, staff engineers, tech leads, and senior ICs.The importance of influence without authority The implicit values that your company incentivizes, that may or may not be aligned with stated values Applying systems thinking from technical systems to people and teams

In this episode of Lead Time Chats, Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, chats with Dan Na, Senior Engineering Manager at Squarespace, about pushing through friction.Dan and Jean chat about:The inevitable friction that arises in fast-growing teams and companiesMindsets for thinking about pushing through friction as part of the jobThe normalization of deviance and how it shows up on engineering teamsFocusing on what you can control vs. being a victim of your circumstancesWhen and how burnout shows up, and frameworks for alleviating or avoiding it.Additional Resources:Pushing Through Friction (the talk) by Dan NaNormalization of Deviance by Dan Luu

In this episode of Lead Time Chats, Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, chats with Jessie Duan, Chief of Staff to the CTO at Roblox, about the Chief of Staff role.They discuss:What the Chief of Staff role looks like and the different kinds of work it entailsHow the role is similar and different to past roles like engineering manager and tech leadThe importance of influencing without authority and learning how to effectively navigate relationships throughout different functionsLearning to let go of optimal solutions in favor of getting something done

In this episode of Lead Time Chats, Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, chats with Kate Heddleston, Senior Engineering Manager at Samsara, about how to manage burnout on your engineering team.Kate and Jean discuss:What is burnout, and what does it look like in its early stagesHow to talk to teammates about activities that energizes or drains them, to mitigate or relieve burnoutGiving team members permission to work flexibly and create effective conditions for creative workLeveraging other factors to engineering speed (not just hours worked)

Kicking off Season 3 of Lead Time Chats, Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, chats with Jennifer Kim, startup advisor and founder of Startup Recruiting Bootcamp, about how startups can hire better.Jen and Jean discuss:The current hiring environment that has shifted in favor of candidatesWhat candidates are looking for when they read your job descriptionHow hiring highlights false positives in hiring, but overlooks false negativesThe importance of screening for motivation fit early on when hiringWhat to watch out for when using backchannel and reference checksAdditional ResourcesStartup Recruiting Bootcamp

半導體，是台灣非常具有代表性的產業，除了是台灣電子產業最重要的支柱，也影響了台股的漲跌，但到底什麼是半導體呢？ 在認識半導體前，我們得先聽聽美商德州儀器(TI)的故事。1958年，德州儀器的工程師發明了世界第一顆IC晶片，正式成為半導體產業發展初期最重要的領頭羊。 就連有「台灣半導體教父」之稱的張忠謀也曾在德州儀器待了將近25年，爾後才創辦台積電，足見德州儀器對台灣半導體界培育人才的關鍵影響。 我們今天邀請到了在TI擔任業務與財務的TIer來與我們分享在德州儀器的工作樣貌，以及多元包容的職場環境，為觀眾揭開半導體產業的神秘面紗。 主持人：天下學習事業群總經理 劉鳳珍 與談者：德州儀器台灣業務經理 Roger Chen、德州儀器財務經理 Jean Hsu ＊意見信箱：bill@cw.com.tw ＊「聽天下」清楚分類更好聽，下載天下雜誌App：https://topic.cw.com.tw/cwapp/applink/cwapp.html

In Season 2, Episode 12 of Lead Time Chats, Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, chats with Ellen Wong, Director of Engineering at Calm, on practical advice for working on hybrid teams. Ellen and Jean discuss: The questions you should be asking when interviewing for a remote or hybrid team. Having the team (and not just the manager) feel ownership of having healthy hybrid and remote processes that are inclusive and effective. How to set up working across timezones so that it can bring regular moments of delight and momentum, not just create friction. Times when they both failed to create inclusive hybrid environments Techniques to create visibility (and celebrate!) of the impact of your work and your team's work 

In this interview with Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range and former leadership coach, we discuss the transition to a hybrid workforce, topgrading interviews, the importance of sleep, what it takes to be a great engineering leader, and more! The post Interview with Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range appeared first on Managers Club.

In this very first live episode of Lead Time Chats, Jean Hsu, Range's VP of Engineering, chats with Sarah Milstein, VP of Engineering at ConvertKit, about how to set remote and hybrid teams up for success.  Sarah and Jean discuss: The biggest challenges hybrid and remote teams face Tactical tips for making hybrid meeting inclusive The importance of exercising your team's experimentation muscle, as there's no one-size-fits-all answer for teamwork or meetings The role of equity in forming team and company policies about who can work remotely

In Season 2, Episode 10 of Lead Time Chats, Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, chats with Jack Danger, VP of Engineering at Pathstream, about technical debt — when to take it on, when and how to pay it down, and how to think about it.Jack and Jean discuss:How to think about technical debt as you might think about financial debt - when do you take it on, and when do you pay it down?Why you don't actually want your startup's codebase to have no technical debtHow to strategically take on technical debt so that you can make higher-ROI investmentsWhat 0% interest technical debt looks like versus high interest rate technical debtHow to align product, engineering, and design behind common goals and metrics

In Season 2, Episode 9 of Lead Time Chats, Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, chats with Indrajit Khare on what it's like to be at a startup acquired by Google.Indrajit was a lead engineer at Bump when it was acquired by Google, where he led the engineering team that built Google Photos and scaled it from 0 to 1 billion users.Indrajit and Jean discuss:Only having a day or two to prep for a standard Google engineering interviewThe multiple factors, including clear purpose and mission, that led to a successful acquisition and integration of the Bump team into GoogleStartup mindset of doing things that don't scale, and what that looks like at a big companyInner workings of Google's acquisition of Bump, integration of the team, internal dog-fooding of Google Photos v1, and public launch.The vast difference of launching a product as a startup vs at Google  

In Season 2, Episode 8 of Lead Time Chats, Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, chats with Beau Lebens, Head of Engineering of WooCommerce at Automattic, about meetups for distributed teams. Beau has been at Automattic for over 12 years, a company which has been fully distributed and pre-pandemic, had regular in-person team meetups for team bonding and alignment.Beau and Jean discuss:The purpose and structure of a standard Automattic in-person team meetupDifferent ways Automattic teams have connected socially this past year, including a zoom cocktail class, escape roomsBBC Dad and now normalized it is now to see a more personal glimpse into people's family livesHow distributed teams can find a mix of NIRL (not in real life) events and physical meetups to build culture and belongingAdditional ResourcesInside the Grand Meetup - Hear from Automattic's CEO Matt Mullenweg and other Automatticians about the annual all-company meetupHow We Work - More from Automattic's blog about how the company worksBeau's Blog - More insights from Beau about his work at Automattic

In Season 2, Episode 7 of Lead Time Chats, Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, chats with Lynne Tye, about how the engineering hiring landscape has changed over the past year and predictions for the months to come.Lynne is the founder of Key Values, a company that helps engineers find new roles on teams that are aligned with their own values.Lynne and Jean discuss: The different phases of engineering hiring over the past year, from sheer survival to the Great ResignationHow the pandemic has helped people clarify what's truly important to them, both in work and their personal livesThe current confusion around remote work - where are teams actually hiring, and will what hiring managers are saying now still be true in a few months?Just how hot the hiring market is right now for engineers!

In Season 2, Episode 6 of Lead Time Chats, Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, chats with Chris Bee, CTO at Lessen, about the common behaviors of effective engineering leaders.Chris and Jean discuss:The difficulty in delegating and letting go of control - and why it's so importantDialing in your judgement in making decisions that keep the business needs front and centerCommon mistakes, such as over-doing it with structure and processes when you become a managerCoaching and career development conversations as ways to amplify your impact

In Season 2, Episode 5 of Lead Time Chats, Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, chats with Rachael Stedman, engineering manager at Asana, about IC manager work, or work that engineering managers do outside of directly supporting their team.Rachael and Jean chat about:When to focus on supporting your team as a manager, versus investing in longer-term, more strategic initiativesFinding initiatives that you're personally excited about and that give you energyBenefits of organizing a task force around initiatives versus doing it aloneThe importance of sharing updates on initiatives, same as you would for other projects.Taking on projects to create a role for yourself that is energizing and enjoyable

In Season 2, Episode 4 of Lead Time Chats, Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, talks to Sumeet Arora, Chief Development Officer at ThoughtSpot, about the challenges of moving on after a long stint at a large tech company.Sumeet joined Cisco almost straight out of school and spent over two decades there, growing his career and the company. More recently, he made the decision and leap to leave for a different professional adventure.Sumeet and Jean discuss:The fear and difficulty of leaving the comfortable bubble of a large tech companyThe importance of learning and adapting, and finding comfort and growth in being slightly uncomfortableHow his relationships with former coworkers has evolved after his departure from CiscoAnchoring on the knowledge that as a leader, your skills are transferable across domainsSurrounding yourself with people who have growth mindsetsHow to leverage your experience, and look at your new role and company with fresh eyes - and not just copy everything that was in place at the larger company

In Season 2, Episode 3 of Lead Time Chats, Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, talks to Kim Scott, author of Radical Candor and Just Work, about privilege and the importance of building for systemic justice.Kim and Jean discuss:The three revelations that led Kim down the path of working on Just WorkThe importance of intentionally building for systemic justiceRecognition of the role of privilege in how Radical Candor is practiced and received.Using “You” statements such as “You can't talk to me like that” in response to bullying (and also how to respond to prejudice and bias)Using Hollaback's 5 D's of Bystander Intervention: Distract, Delegate, Document, Delay, and DirectAdditional Resources:Just Work: Get Sh*t Done, Fast & FairJust Work

In Season 2, Episode 2 of Lead Time Chats, Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, talks to Tess Rinearson, VP of Engineering at Interchain, about advice for early career engineering managers. Tess became an engineering manager at 24 and noted that she's been solicited for advice for even younger engineering managers - some as young as 21.Tess and Jean discuss:The recent trend of earlier career engineers moving into management (sometimes as young as 21 or 22 years old)Working with mentors and coaches as ways to surround yourself with context, experience, and wisdomHow to manage and support engineers far more senior than yourselfThe manager-engineer pendulum, and the challenge of leveling up both skill sets simultaneously

In Season 2, Episode 1 of Lead Time Chats, Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, talks to Camille Fournier, Managing Director of Two Sigma and author of The Manager's Path, about boring stuff — specifically building boring tech and making boring plans. Camille and Jean discuss: Limited innovation tokens and how to decide where to spend them (hint: it's not on cool tech)! What boring plans actually look like, especially when you do need to upgrade to more interesting tech so your team doesn't fall behind. Rolling out company-wide platform updates as rigorously as you would plan for an external launch How to manage up and build credibility that you're delivery value when undertaking long-running technical projectsAdditional Resources: The Manager's Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change  Make Boring Plans by Camille FournierChoose Boring Technology by Dan McKinley

Interview with Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range about structuring, scheduling and making your remote meetings productive. Learn from her stories about handling an avalanche of remote meetings, and what she's learned along the way about transforming these meetings and supporting her team. https://codingsans.com/engineering-management-newsletter?utm_source=Podcast&utm_medium=platforms (Sign up for the Level-up Engineering newsletter!) In this interview we're covering: The optimal number of remote meetings daily Making remote meetings productive Structuring remote meetings Necessary extra meetings in a remote environment Tools to support remote meetings Meetings that don't work remotely Providing a flexibility of schedule in your company Excerpt from the interview: "This is my rule of thumb: remove status updates and announcements from meetings, and communicate them as asynchronous updates. You can use a tool like Loom for this. Leaders can record a short video message, and the employees can watch it at any time and leave comments. Use async channels with anything that doesn't require discussion, or where you can start out without a discussion. Don't rely too much on meetings; move everything you can to asynchronous updates. For example, it's easier for me to reply to an email than it would be to find 15-30 minutes to discuss the same thing in a video call." https://codingsans.com/blog/remote-meeting?utm_source=Podcast&utm_medium=platforms (Click here to read the full interview!)

In this episode, Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, chats with Gergely Orosz — formerly at Uber, Skyscanner, and Skype — about the decision to go into management.Jean and Gergely chat about:Why Gergely thought management was LAME - and resisted becoming a managerThe huge contrast between becoming an “accidental manager” at a startup and becoming a manager at UberDefining his leadership by having a list he had created of all the managers he wanted to avoid beingHow to support new managers and set them up for successHow a checklist of management activities can create a tighter feedback loop for new managersThe unexpected loneliness of being a managerYou can find the manager checklist Gergely used for new managers here: https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/checklist-for-first-time-managers

In Episode 10 of Lead Time Chats, Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, chats with Akhil Gupta — formerly VP of Engineering and GM at Dropbox — about how to navigate uncertainty when transitioning to higher impact roles. How do you know when you're ready for that next role? How do you fill in gaps, and when do you take the leap?Akhil started his career at Google, and was a Principal Engineer by the time he left for Dropbox. At Dropbox, he grew the infra org from just 10 engineers, and stepped into the Head of Infrastructure role, then VP of Engineering, and then GM and VP of Enterprise.Jean and Akhil discuss:Akhil's transition to management at Google — going from 0 to 40 direct reports!How to surround yourself with people who are rooting for your success, as you transition to greater impact rolesThe biggest challenges of transitioning from a functional leader to a cross-functional leader (i.e. VP of Engineering to GM of Enterprise at Dropbox)What relationship-building looks like when your org has thousands of people, and 1:1s won't scale!

In Episode 11 of Lead Time Chats, Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, chats with Harper Reed about how meetings can give everyone a voice in team meetings. Harper is currently CEO of Galactic. Formerly he was CEO of Modest, which was acquired by Paypal, and CTO of Obama for America.Host note: Harper and I originally met at FooCamp in 2013, when he attended a FooCamp unconference session I led called How to Run Efficient Meetings. When we re-connected a few months ago, I discovered that after that one hour session 8 years ago, he revamped meetings at his company, and at every company he's worked at since. We re-united to record a Lead Time Chat nerding out on meetings and to encourage more teams to implement these high-density, high-efficiency team meetings.Jean and Harper discuss:How a 3 hour rambling meeting turned into a 30 minute high density meeting, with a bit of structure and facilitationThe impact that highly efficient meetings have had on Harper's teams over the last 8 yearsHow to create a meeting culture that's not dominated by the loudest people in the roomTips on how to get started with this type of structured check-in meetingFor more on the evolution of check-in meetings, check out this post:Nine years of meeting efficiency: Lessons learned from Range's VP of EngineeringYou can also find some highlights in this blog post:Harper Reed on giving everyone a voice in team meetings 

Wrapping up Series 1 of Lead Time Chats,  Jean Hsu, VPE at Range, chats with Marc Hedlund about the topic of sponsorship, and how to do it in a way that actually makes a difference.Marc has been an engineering leader at companies such as Mailchimp, Skyliner, and Stripe. He also is a Director for Code2040, a non-profit that works to bring under-represented minorities into engineering and entrepreneurial roles in tech.Jean and Marc discuss: Ways to actually learn from and support under-indexed folks in tech that isn't just performative.Not falling in the trap of basking in the attention of getting credit for diversity-related work, as a white man.As a member of a majority group, how and why to give away opportunities that come your way.Measuring your success by your outcomes, whether the actions are small (making an intro, writing a testimonial) or large (revamping a hiring process).

In this episode, Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, chats with Lara Hogan, author of Resilient Management, about how engineering managers can lead effectively a year into a global pandemic, even when they may be struggling.Jean and Lara chat about:Leaning into one-way asynchronous communication as much as possible — especially for announcements and status updates that don't require a back-and-forthUsing Red-Yellow-Green check-ins in 1:1s and other situations to make it as lightweight as humanly possible to check in on your coworkersMaking sure your oxygen mask is on first so that you can help othersDefragging your calendar!You can access Lara's Defrag Your Calendar worksheet here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qOXEOOYvxiA4LDgmEqK0hCYuJ44nf0Z8UM-j48kK4gw/editYou can also try out Range for asynchronous check-ins that include red-yellow-green mood indicators. https://www.range.co​

Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, chats with Juan Pablo Buriticá, most recently Head of LatAm Engineering at Stripe, about the common pitfalls engineering managers make at high-growth startups.Jean and Juan Pablo discuss:The difference between being a manager at a high-growth startup vs. a larger, more established companyThe importance of understanding business needs in communicating about technical workWhy you shouldn't just copy processes from other companies wholesale (like Spotify's matrix management)What it means to take a product approach to team processes

In this episode, Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, chats with  Kaya Thomas, senior software engineer at Calm, about common challenges that early career engineers face.Jean and Kaya chat about:Overcoming some of the stigmas of being an early career engineerHow to negotiate your first full-time job offer, especially if you have more experience than averageWays that engineering managers can support early-and-mid stage engineers on their teamKnowing when to leave your first engineering job!

In Episode 9 of Lead Time Chats, Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, chats with Katie Wilde, VP of Engineering at Buffer and co-author of "The Holloway Guide to Remote Work," about supporting your team's mental health — and your own — in what feels like this final pandemic stretch.Jean and Katie discuss: The difficulty of sitting with a sense of hope, and how this last stretch can actually seem more intolerable than the last year in a pandemicDebugging when you're feeling out of whack at work with the BICEPS frameworkZoom fatigue and why Kate suggests you might consider lying down on a couch for your next 1:1!Work-appropriate ways to start conversations about mental health, including stoplight (red/yellow/green) check-insHow managers can ensure they have emotional support through external or internal peer or professional support.Unconventional ways to find social connection in a pandemic — i.e. internet friends!

Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, talks to Will Larson, CTO at Calm, about getting into management early in his career and how it impacted his professional evolution and his books An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management and Staff Engineer: Leadership Beyond the Management Track.Jean and Will discuss: Negotiating their first tech jobs (or not negotiating their first tech jobs)The false expectation that the staff engineering route will be more predictable than the management routeHow getting external support is keyIncreasing difficulty of switching between the paths as you become more seniorHow to approach non-work work (books, talks, blog posts, etc).

Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, talks to Duretti Hirpa, a principal engineer at Zipper, about mentoring and coaching junior and mid-level engineers. Jean and Duretti discuss:What junior and mid-level engineers most need.Why women and people of color can't always take the advice they're givenWhat it means to be over-mentored and under-sponsoredThe difference in level-setting when you're coming into a new company vs. going up for promotionHow internal promotions can be highly politicalWhat engineering managers can do to best support people earlier in their career

Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, chats with Cate Huston, Engineering Director at DuckDuckGo and raccoon enthusiast

Parent Driven Development 66: Finding a new job during the pandemic. Welcome, Jean Hsu! Jean Hsu (https://twitter.com/jyhsu) is a writer, coach, and software engineer turned leadership coach after working for a decade in Silicon Valley. She is the VP of engineering at Range Labs (https://www.range.co/) and Co-founder of Co Leadership (https://coleadership.com/), which focuses on filling the gaps in leadership development in the tech industry. Jean doesn’t miss writing code, but she does miss deleting it. 0:53 Finding a new job during the pandemic Desire strikes for leadership The hiring process 5:20 How did the pandemic change your thought process Intentionality of specific desires - management, leadership, flexibility Enjoying the journey rather than letting comparison or stress take over 7:30 What would Jean do differently now? Finding ways to lean into async communication with a remote team in different time zones, while keeping the team engaged and connected with each other Hybrid mix of in-person and remote is the future for companies 13:13 Pre-pandemic commute tales Feels like a different lifetime 15:40 New expectations for Range during the pandemic Getting rid of the 9-5; windowed work with colored labels Core hours for team meetings Setting boundaries 19:40 Genius and fail moments KWu closed her son’s fingers between a door hinge… #fail Allison’s daughter turns 3 and shines at her yearly doctor's appointment. #genius Jean downloaded TikTok and discovered the best parenting hack to tell your kids to do a task, rather than ask. #genius Chris brings back his daughter's love of Star Wars. #genius How can I support the podcast? Please follow us @parentdrivendev (https://twitter.com/parentdrivendev) on Twitter or email us at panel@parentdrivendevelopment.com (mailto:panel@parentdrivendevelopment.com). Our website is at ParentDrivenDevelopment.com (https://parentdrivendevelopment.com). Allison (https://twitter.com/allie_p) KWu (https://twitter.com/kwugirl) Chris Sexton (https://twitter.com/crsexton) Special Guest: Jean Hsu.

Are you ready to finally start spending real time solving the process or cultural problems causing big slowdowns in your team, organization, or company? This week I'm introducing you to Big Results. I'm joined by Leadership Coach Jean Hsu to talk about why we don't make time for these projects, even if we find them really exciting. And I'm teaching you the three-part formula for finally getting them done. Get the full shownotes and this episode's Podcast Guide at https://exceptional.vision/podcast/1, or text EXCITEMENT to 44222 to have the Podcast Guide delivered right to your email.

After coaching 100+ tech leads, managers, directors, VPs, and CTOs, Jean Hsu and Edmond Lau are distilling their most valuable lessons into workshops and online courses through their company, Co Leadership. In conversation with Intercom's Louis Bennett, they explain the difference between leadership and management, the power of positive feedback, and why trust is the foundation of the most effective engineering teams.

Support these videos: http://pgbovine.net/support.htmhttp://pgbovine.net/PG-Vlog-139-college-non-classroom-learning.htmActual content starts at 3:27- [video content starts at 3:27](https://youtu.be/3LRcFuCc6tc?t=207)- [my tweet that led to this video](https://twitter.com/pgbovine/status/988072296299589632) (see my webpage for archived version)- [original tweet that sparked this discussion](https://twitter.com/jimmysong/status/987662491730657280)- [PG Podcast - Episode 29 - Jean Hsu on engineering leadership consulting](http://pgbovine.net/PG-Podcast-29-Jean-Hsu.htm)Recorded: 2018-04-22

Edmond Lau is the author of the book, The Effective Engineer — now the de facto onboarding guide for many engineering teams. He's spent the past decade building and leading engineering teams at high-growth companies across Silicon Valley — including at Quip, Quora, Ooyala, and Google. As an engineering leadership coach, Edmond has worked directly with CTO's, directors, managers, and other emerging leaders to unlock what's possible for them and their teams. He's run workshops and seminars at places like Pinterest, Google, Facebook, Quip, and Medium to raise the bar on what it means to be an effective engineering leader. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Forbes, Time, Slate, Inc., Fortune, and Wired. Edmond recently embarked on a new adventure with engineering-manager-turned-coach Jean Hsu to build the best leadership development brand out there for engineers and people in tech. They'll be taking the most valuable lessons they've learned from coaching 100+ tech leads, managers, directors, engineering VPs, and CTOs — and distilling them into simple frameworks, powerful workshops, and online experiences. Follow the journey at coleadership.com, where they'll be sharing everything they're learning. On today's episode we discuss how to be an effective engineering leader, frameworks for improving your management skills and coaching for success. Links Website: effectiveengineer.com / coleadership.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/edmondlau LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/effectiveengineer/ Show Notes The Effective Engineer Software Lead Weekly The Manager's Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change High Output Management POWERFUL CONVERSATIONS FOR LEADERS IN TECH

Following engineering stints at Google, Pulse and Medium – as both an IC and tech lead – Jean Hsu stepped away from the codebase to help coach others on how to navigate their own transition into management. In conversation with Intercom's Adam Risman, Jean shares the struggles encountered in her own move to management, the importance of psychological safety in the workplace, and how to fill the leadership voids she sees in today's tech landscape.

Transcript for Should You Worry About Your Skills Getting Rusty?   Poornima Vijayashanker: In the last episode, we talked about what it's like to transition from being an individual contributor into a leader, and explored some tradeoffs. If you missed the episode, be sure to check it out in the link below this video. In today's episode, we're gonna talk about one of the major concerns people have that holds them back from doing the transition, which is the concern that their skills are gonna get rusty. So, stay tuned.              Welcome to *Build*, brought to you by Pivotal Tracker. I'm your host, Poornima Vijayashanker. In each episode, innovators and I debunk a number of myths and misconceptions related to building products, companies, and your career in tech. One myth that often holds us back from transitioning from being that individual contributor into a leader is the fear that we're gonna get rusty when it comes to the skills that we've worked painstakingly hard to craft. If you're an engineer, you're gonna lose the ability to code. If you're a designer, you lose the ability to design. And if you're a salesperson or a marketer, you lose your ability to close. Well, in today's episode, we're gonna debunk that myth and more. And to help us out, Jean Hsu is back, who is an engineering leadership coach. She's gonna help us dive into this myth.              Thanks again for joining us, Jean.   Jean Hsu:   Thanks for having me again.   Poornima Vijayashanker: Yeah. Last time we talked about the benefits of going from being an individual contributor to a leader, especially in engineering. And not to shy away from it if we feel worried that we're not capable of doing it. But I know another concern that people have is not about their capabilities of doing the future work or being a leader, but, "Oh my gosh. I'm no longer going to be capable of doing my current job," whether that's coding, designing, marketing, or so on. Why do you think people have this fear?   Jean Hsu:   I think it's something we touched on last time, which is they don't see the path of the leadership role. So of course you're going to hold onto what you know, which is the technical skills, the coding, all that stuff. A lot of the times when I have this conversation with people, what I say is, "As a coach what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna illuminate that other path, the leadership path." And for most of the people I'm talking to, it's not as much of a technical leadership path. It's more of a people management path, which are both leadership paths. But part of my role is to illuminate that, so that they then...then the question is, implies that you don't want those technical skills to get rusty, right?   Poornima Vijayashanker: Right.   Jean Hsu:   Which I often feel like it's a symptom of they're not getting enough investment in seeing the rewards of stepping into a leadership role and having a more broader impact.   Poornima Vijayashanker: Yeah, or learning new skills.   Jean Hsu:   Right, or learning new skills.   Poornima Vijayashanker: Yeah. Is this a legitimate fear, though? Do our skills become rusty as we go into a new leadership position or any new role?   Jean Hsu:   I mean, for my technical skills, yeah for sure, they're rusty. They're definitely rusty because I'm not practicing them. I think you do have to get to a point where you feel comfortable with that. I definitely was at a point when I wasn't comfortable with that, when I was in transition. I remember one morning, I woke up and my calendar was back-to-back, 9:00 to 5:30 filled with meetings. I pulled out my laptop and I opened up three pull requests, just delete code that I had found that was unused. It was like 15 minutes. I was like, "OK. Good. I've done something today."   Poornima Vijayashanker: Well, sometimes throwing out trash is helpful.   Jean Hsu:   Yeah. And when I told my manager this, he was like, "Is that the best use of your time?" He asked me this. Like, OK clearly you know the answer to that. It's a rhetorical question. It's not the best use of my time, and it's actually indicative of something else, which is that I haven't really transitioned my mindset to the actual work that I'm doing in this new role, is work. And seeing the impact of it. That wasn't clear to me yet. So that's why I was holding onto this thing that made me feel good in my past role.   Poornima Vijayashanker: Yeah. How can you figure out what the new work is? I think that's a big problem for people, is they're thrust into this role, or it's a nice promotion, or maybe they genuinely want it, but then in that first week, month, even year, they're not really sure what to do on a day-to-day basis.   Jean Hsu:   Yeah. I mean, I think adding to that is that a lot of companies have founders or managers who also haven't done it before. They're not getting that model of, oh this is who I want to be as a manager. As an engineer, you see all sorts. Oh, this person went to Android or front end, they're more of a tech lead. This person's more of a Ten-X engineer type. And you don't really get to see that as much if you're talking purely about the people side of leadership, the people management.              One of the ways that you can do that is, I mean it's a little bit self-promotional, but working with a coach like me, who can help you see that path or help the people on your team see that path. There's books. There's definitely resources. There's a lot of Slack teams, that I think just being in the Slack teams is lurking. You kind of absorb what are the topics people talk about. And what are the things that come up. When you're not managing people, you don't see the things, like performance reviews, performance improvement plans, how to reward people, how to give them positive feedback and incentivize them and motivate them. You don't see that as a post lead.   Poornima Vijayashanker: Yeah. I think you're onto something, the concept of shadowing. Actually it can be really valuable. For me personally, I got to do a lot of that, having been at a very early stage startup and not as the founder, but rather as a founding engineer. Seeing how marketing and sales and engineering and product all operated and the leaders in those was valuable because when you're on the ground floor, you see how people develop, but not everybody has access to that. And not every manager enjoys being shadowed. What are some other ways you could simulate that kind of behavior?   Jean Hsu:   You know, I think if you have a close peer group at your company, that can be a good place to start to have these conversations. Someplace that's trusted and confidential. If you're a tech lead or you're a first-time people manager, to have someone you can say, "Hey, I have this situation," and you don't have to be alone in figuring out a strategy to deal with it, but you can go to your peer and have this peer mentoring or coaching relationship. I found that that's useful just in seeing what other people are doing and their perspectives.   Poornima Vijayashanker: Yeah. What about setting expectations? I think some managers are good at setting expectations and some are more carefree and want you to discover it yourself. What have you seen in your experience?   Jean Hsu:   What do you mean by the expectation?   Poornima Vijayashanker: So the expectation of, hey if you're a hiring manager, for example, you're gonna hire 30 direct reports.   Jean Hsu:   Oh, I see.   Poornima Vijayashanker: Or if you are the team manager, you're gonna push this product. Whatever the goals are of the organization. Some people are better at delineating and having a clear set of expectations, along with standards. And others are like, "Well, here's the company motto. Do no evil and ship." So you're like, "Within the confines of that, what do I do on a day-to-day?"   Jean Hsu:   Yeah. I think having some quarterly or monthly alignment and expectation setting is useful. It's the same as the first time you become a manager or a tech lead, it feels really awkward to not have...most people start off with like no stand-ps. Then they're like, "Well, I don't know what this person's working on. I haven't heard from them in three days." It's like, well maybe you should have standups, or maybe you should have some sort of weekly or bi-weekly, every other, twice a week meeting where people say if they're on track or not. I think that's generally a good strategy, is to set the high level expectations and then report back on those. Am I on track to hit those goals? Because then it feels like it's set up beforehand, so it's not, "Hey I noticed things aren't going well, so that's why I'm checking in on you."   Poornima Vijayashanker: Sure. Then it feels like am I getting reprimanded or am I getting guided.   Jean Hsu:   Right.   Poornima Vijayashanker: So, coming back to this concept again of the skills. And as somebody who is either technical or has a craft, and moving away from that into this more amorphous, squishy leadership role, are there actual skills that you acquire as a leader?   Jean Hsu:   Oh yeah, for sure.   Poornima Vijayashanker: Yeah, what are those?   Jean Hsu:   One of the ways that I was told to think about it, for me, I was sort of like, "I don't understand. I have these technical skills and now I'm being asked to do this thing where I feel like it's a completely different skill set. I'm talking to people one-on-one all day and dealing with the things that are coming up there." The way I was told, or asked to think about it, was that it's still problem solving, it's just that the interfaces and the APIs are people and teams, rather than code and services and the systems. They're still systems, but it's people and teams, and you have to think about how do these teams, what's the API between them and it's more like that.   Poornima Vijayashanker: What are some skills that you can point to now on your resume or LinkedIn?   Jean Hsu:   How to give difficult feedback.   Poornima Vijayashanker: That's important.   Jean Hsu:   How to debug teams that are not working efficiently. There's the low-level tweaks, like, oh, email once a day. The low-level things. But then taking a team that's not working very effectively and making a bunch of high-level changes in staffing, and then have them actually be able to execute because of the changes you made. That's something you don't get to see. Rather than the little refactors, you're doing more of a full rewrite or something.   Poornima Vijayashanker: Yeah, a re-org, right?   Jean Hsu:   Re-org, yeah.   Poornima Vijayashanker: Yeah. Anything else?   Jean Hsu:   Yeah. There's a ton. As many technical skills there are, there are as many in leadership and people management.   Poornima Vijayashanker: Yeah. I think it's important for people to understand that. What about writing? Do you feel like that's a valuable skill?   Jean Hsu:   Yeah. I mean, Medium was very much a writing culture. Everything was written internally, the internal version of Medium. I feel like that's something that—I consider myself also still in a leadership role, even though I just work for myself, but I work with a lot of people and I feel like all the time I spend in writing has come back. It's a huge investment for me. Yeah, it pays off.   Poornima Vijayashanker: Yeah. So in being a leader, investing in writing is good, whether or not you're actually comfortable doing it or you feel like you're particularly good at it.   Jean Hsu:   Yeah. I think it's something that's really valuable to get better at. Even if you're not publishing. Whether it's writing emails. I'm sure you've all had this experience where you get this massive email and you don't even read it. And then whoever sent it is like, "But I sent you all the information." It's sort of this brain dump, over-communication strategy. I think writing is just a part of communication and figuring out what's the right level of communication because you can under-communicate, and most people in engineering teams tend to under-communicate. And then there's this tendency to over-communicate, to try to correct for it. And then people just tune you out. Figuring out what do people want to hear. What do they care about. That's all part of the writing, too.   Poornima Vijayashanker: Nice. Now what prompted you to transition to being an engineering leadership coach?   Jean Hsu:   In reflecting in my time at Medium, I realize that I had a lot of peer support. A lot of peer support and my manager's support in making that transition. And even then it was hard. So I started talking to people at different companies and realizing that that transition, most people don't have any support. They have their direct reports and they have to keep it together, so they seem like things aren't falling apart. And a lot of times, they have the absent, whoever, CEO or CTO, who's not really helping them and they don't have that peer. And so I really wanted to...I saw how the benefits of having a really people-centric and caring engineering manager, because that's really the type of team we built at Medium, and thinking about how to expand my own impact. It was like, "Oh, what if I worked with a bunch of different companies and tried to help them level up their engineering management game?"              That's kind of how I landed on that. I also really enjoyed the one-on-one work that I was doing at Medium for the team.   Poornima Vijayashanker: Nice. So that's what you're doing now? You are a leadership coach for engineering teams.   Jean Hsu:   That's right, yeah.   Poornima Vijayashanker: What's your sweet spot in terms of a team size?   Jean Hsu:   See, it depends. I work with some companies that are like six people. I work with some companies that are like 3,000 people, but the teams themselves are smaller. I really enjoy the 10 to 50 people engineering teams, because I feel like there's still a lot of malleability in what they're doing and how they're building out their management structure. I like to work with first-time managers, because I feel like there's no bad habits to break. You can just be the one who is like, "This is what management is." They're like, "OK. Yes.” That's where I initially started when I created my business, but now I'm working with anyone from trying to figure out whether they want to go in the people management direction or stay in the technical side of things, or all the way through directors and VPNs.   Poornima Vijayashanker: That's awesome. What are some questions or problems that you help them with?   Jean Hsu:   A lot of it is honestly the mindset. A lot of it is as people move into leadership roles, or they don't have leadership roles, but they are expected to step up so they can get the explicit role. A lot of it is seeing that they don't really need the permission or they don't need someone to be like, "I bestow on you this role. Now you may do these things." So just getting people to see that. As a coach, I'll push them like, "Hey, what do you need to try? What are some things you can try out this week or next week?" Then they report back and I'm like, "OK, cool." It's really cool when you have a whole team of people just all experimenting with their behavior and you just see everyone just stepping up a bit more and taking initiative.   Poornima Vijayashanker: Awesome. Well, thank you, Jean. For our audience out there who may want to get in touch with you because they have an engineering team or an organization that could use some of your coaching, how can they do that?   Jean Hsu:   They can go to my website at [jeanhsu.com](jeanhsu.com) and I also have a link to my writing, too, there as well.   Poornima Vijayashanker: Great. Well we'll be sure to include the link right below this video.   Jean Hsu:   OK, thank you.              This episode of *Build* is brought to you by our sponsor, Pivotal Tracker.

Have you been in your current role for a while, and are eager to try something new?   Perhaps you’ve thought about transitioning from being an individual contributor into a leadership role, but you’re not sure if it’s the right move for you?   You worry about being qualified enough, leading people, being an authority figure, and what your day-to-day will be like.   While it sounds exciting and maybe a great opportunity to grow, you worry about your existing skills getting rusty.   Well, all this month on Build we’re going to be exploring the tradeoffs that aren’t talked about when we choose to transition from being an individual contributor to a leader. In today’s episode, I’ve invited Jean Hsu who was formerly an Engineering Manager at Medium and is now an Engineering Leadership Coach.   Here’s what you’ll learn in this episode:   Why our perception of who or what we think it takes to be in a role is often wrong, and why we are more capable of learning and growing in a new role than we realize When it comes to leadership, it’s OK to take time to discover your own style Why the comfort and well-defined nature of our current role makes a transition harder and make us feel less accomplished in the beginning In the episode Jean mentions the book: The Manager's Path, check it out here.  -- Build is produced as a partnership between Femgineer and Pivotal Tracker. San Francisco video production by StartMotionMEDIA. -- Transcript for What Stops Us From Transitioning Into A Leadership Role   Poornima Vijayashanker: Have you been in your current role for a while and maybe you're considering a transition from being an individual contributor to a leader, and you're not sure if it's right for you? Well, in today's *Build* episode, we're going to explore some of the tradeoffs that aren't talked about, so stay tuned.              Welcome to *Build*, brought to you by Pivotal Tracker. I'm your host, Poornima Vijayashanker. In each episode, innovators and I debunk a number of myths and misconceptions related to building products, companies, and your career in tech. Now one myth that I came across early in my career was the transition from being an individual contributor to a team leader. I struggled with this transition because I worried about my skills getting rusty and whether or not I had the skill set to actually lead people. So if you're grappling with this, we're going to cover it in today's episode. To help us out, I've invited Jean Hsu, who is an engineering leadership coach. Thanks for joining us today, Jean.   Jean Hsu: Thanks for having me.   Poornima Vijayashanker: Yeah. You and I met a couple months ago at a event. I'm really curious to know a little bit more about your background. If you can walk us through what drew you into tech and ultimately led to what you're doing today.   Jean Hsu: Sure. I went to school for computer science. I actually went to a liberal arts school. A few years in, I started trying to figure out what I wanted to do and what I really enjoyed was the coding and the projects and the—I didn't really know anything about applications, what the applications were going to be, or what software engineering was as a job, but I really loved the classes. I think that when people talk about how to attract women to tech, a lot of the conversations are actually, they don't seem as relevant to me because I really loved the actual coding itself, and I didn't know anything about what I would do after I graduate.   Poornima Vijayashanker: So where did you land after college?   Jean Hsu: I had interned at Google the summer before I graduated, and then I ended up taking a full-time offer at Google that started right after I graduated. I moved up to Mountain View and I was there for about a year and a half. Then I quit and wanted to see what else was out there, and kind of had the sense that Mountain View and the Google campus is a little bit of a bubble, and so I started to dabble in Android development. I ended up at Pulse and did some of the Android development there. Then after that—I was there for about a year and then I ended up at the Obvious Corporation, which later became Medium. I worked on their first prototype. Then I was there for about five and a half years.   Poornima Vijayashanker: Oh, wow.   Jean Hsu:   And then I left about six months ago.   Transition from engineer To engineering manager   Poornima Vijayashanker: So what catapulted you to strike out on your own?   Jean Hsu:   It was kind of the right time to make a big change. I don't know if it's like, I have two kids. I have an almost two-year-old and a four-and-a-half-year-old and that's very, it's not stable, but there's sort of a monotony in taking care of them. I had been at Medium for five and a half years, so I think there was a part of me that just really wanted a really big change and I was ready to kind of jump in the deep end again and figure something out that was completely new to me.   Poornima Vijayashanker: Now when you're at Medium, that's when you did your transition, right, from being an engineer to an engineering manager.   Jean Hsu:   That's right, yeah.   Our perception of who or what we think it takes to be in a role   Poornima Vijayashanker: What kind of prompted you to even consider this transition? Because a lot of people just think, “I'm happy kind of coding away. Why rock the boat?”   Jean Hsu:   Yeah, I mean for me I was pretty happy coding away, but I think I wanted to see where I could be more impactful. I don't know that I really chose it for myself. I was sort of, I wanted to have more impact and influence. Sometimes I was stepping into tech lead or project lead roles. I think at some point it was like everyone kind of knew that this was kind of the path I was headed and I was almost the last person to know. It was interesting because when I made that switch and started to take on a few direct reports, I think everyone was like, “Oh, it should have happened like a long time ago.”   Poornima Vijayashanker: What do you think they saw in you that maybe took you a while to see in yourself?   Jean Hsu:   I don't know. I guess I didn't really know what a manager did. Even at the time at Medium it wasn't called manager. I think they still call it a group lead, so it was very much this mentor, advocate, coach role, which is sort of, what I'm doing now is very similar to that. I think it was that people saw that in me, that they felt like they could talk to me about things and that I would help them solve their problems. I was never very much of a command and control, top-down type manager, which is maybe what I thought managers did.   Poornima Vijayashanker: Yeah, so maybe it was your perception or, “My misperception of this is what a manager is, so clearly I'm not a manager because that's not what I want to do,” when really you've naturally been doing a lot of great tasks or I guess things that managers would do.   Jean Hsu:   Right, yeah, like when you, if you ask me like, “Oh, do I want to help people and support them and help them solve their problems,” like, “Yeah.”   Poornima Vijayashanker: Right, but not maybe the “I want to enforce strict process or—”   Jean Hsu:   Right, like I'm just going to tell you what to do every day.   Why we think we aren’t capable of leading   Poornima Vijayashanker: Got it. Tell us some of your concerns, then, going in, aside from this “I don't know if I'm capable of being a manager or what a manager role entails.” What were some concerns with that?   Jean Hsu:   I mean my transition was pretty gradual. But as I got more and more in it, I definitely had this concern that it was too early to go 100% in that direction.   Poornima Vijayashanker: Why?   Jean Hsu:   I mean I think a lot of it is the tech industry. I sort of have this sense that people who don't look like me, specifically white males, if they are, they look young and they're in a management position, people tend to give them more the benefit of the doubt and think, “Oh, that's someone who is like so talented that he got promoted into management.” I sort of worried the opposite would happen to me where people would look at me and say, “Oh, she doesn't even have that much technical experience,” or like, “She looks really young. She came out of a boot camp,” or something, whereas I really had like a decade full of experience. I definitely had that anxiety of how will I be perceived once I leave this company.   Poornima Vijayashanker: And how did you handle that perception, kind of get over it?   Jean Hsu:   That’s a good question. I think that a lot of it was sort of—I mean I also had the sort of struggle of do I then count as someone who's like nontechnical anymore. You see these statistics of like, “Oh, 70% of women leave their technical roles.” I’m like, “Am I contributing to that?”              But I think what I landed on is sort of like the whole point is that you should be able to do what you feel, like is your calling, and that you want to do and not that I'm contributing to the statistic that we want to go down, not up. I think that's part of how I kind of came to terms with it. Then when I was thinking about how to, like if I was leaving the IC work too early, what my manager helped me focus on was what would I get out of doing more of it.              He's like, “Well, if you want to do VP eng or a head of engineering type role, I feel like you've already demonstrated that you can do that. Even if it's areas that you're not familiar with, you can work with engineers to figure it out, you've done that before, and so what would you get out of it.” I was like, “Oh, I guess I just…” It's sort of this feeling of like I should do it, I should do more technical work, not that I really wanted to or that I was drawn to do more of it.   Poornima Vijayashanker: It's interesting that he led you down that path of what would it look like in your current role if you were to do more of maybe the same, or where would that kind of take you longer term, and is that the kind of work that you want to do.   Jean Hsu:   Right, and he was very open with me and saying like, “OK, well, you know what? I understand that you may want to go, kind of like shift back a little bit, but for this quarter we really need you here and let's reassess.” It felt very like a temporary, not temporary, but it was like an ongoing conversation. It wasn't like if I wanted to go back into IC work, I'd have to leave the company. I always had that advocate in him.   How long it really takes to transition into a leadership role   Poornima Vijayashanker: So you ultimately decided to take the choice and go from being an individual contributor, an IC, into a leadership. What were the first few months like in that transition?   Jean Hsu:   It was kind of a long transition. I'd say it was like over maybe two years. The first few months I mean I definitely had this sense of like, I don't have time to get my work done because when you're responsible for both the coding work and being responsible for teams or people, it's really hard to have that, like make your time.   Poornima Vijayashanker: Right, contact switching.   Jean Hsu:   So I definitely felt like it was easy to just say, “Oh, I had a day full of meetings. I didn't get any work done.” That’s a very, very common mindset to have when you make that transition.   When we don’t have something tangible to point to we feel unaccomplished   Poornima Vijayashanker: I think for me when I went from being an engineer to a founder, the hardest thing was I'm no longer going to have something to point to at the end of the day because before I could build something and deploy it and be like, “Look, what I built,” and at the end of the day I was like, “Yeah, I talked to five people.”   Jean Hsu:   Yeah, I started keeping, in the times where I felt like the transition was the roughest I started keeping a log of what is the one thing that I felt was most impactful that I did that day, and sometimes I kind of had to make it up. I was, “Oh, I had a one-on-one with this engineer, and maybe she thinks about herself fundamentally differently now and is now going to interact with people in a slightly different way.” You kind of have to take those where you can get them.   Poornima Vijayashanker: It's squishy and you don't see the results immediately and it’s developing a level of comfort with that. I think that's one of the harder pieces and where people get demotivated when they're not seeing their results fast enough versus with code it can be very instantaneous.   Jean Hsu:   Yeah, and I think management success or being a leader is a little bit more subjective and the feedback loop is a lot longer.   Poornima Vijayashanker: Yeah, let's talk about that. Yeah.   Jean Hsu:   I mean it could be, I mean if you're just talking about actual feedback that you get, that's, I don't know, at companies that kind of have—can I curse on here?   Poornima Vijayashanker: Of course.   Jean Hsu:   —have their shit together, it’s like six months. Every six months you get some feedback on how you're doing, the official formal feedback loop. But beyond that you have the one-on-one. That's a very individual relationship. I think for a lot of people they don't really see the impact of their work. One of the things I've been thinking about is for engineering work for the most part your impact is somewhat proportional to the work you put in. If you spend two months building a system with a team, that's two months that you put in. Hopefully it's an important thing that you've done. Then the management work sometimes you can do some tweaking or some restocking up front that can have really big impact that people might not trace back to you, and so you sort of have to see that loop, that feedback loop for yourself.   Managing and leading your peers   Poornima Vijayashanker: Were you ever in a situation where you also went from being an engineer with a bunch of teammates to then being their manager and having them as direct reports?   Jean Hsu:   Mmm-hmm. Most of my early direct reports were new grads. In some ways that was sort of easier. I had just been there eight years ago and so I had a very good sense of like, “Oh, this is kind of where you are now, and here's the type of support you need.” I'd say as a tech lead it was sometimes a little bit more difficult, especially when I was suddenly responsible for managing the work of people who were more senior than me, that I feel like I kind of took a very hands-off approach, which sometimes was like, there’s just miscommunication. But it is something I feel like especially as a manager you have to navigate, like how, it's OK to be friendly with people. I mean obviously you want to be friendly with people in the workplace, but how much you can be like good friends outside of work.   Poornima Vijayashanker: And how to be authoritative.   Jean Hsu:   Right, and navigating that was a little bit tricky to me. Figuring out if someone invited me to something, “Should I go?” I’m like, “What? If I did something, who should I invite?” In some ways I just didn't hang out with people at work who were on the engineering team because it was like, I felt like I had to invite 30 people. I don't want to invite 30 people.   Poornima Vijayashanker: Right, so you want to be careful about playing favorites and stuff like that.   Jean Hsu:   Right. I think I was especially sensitive to that, because I had seen it, I'd seen it happen. People who are friends go to Vegas together and then you're just like, “Whoa, I understand you’re friends, but it's hard to say that that's completely separate from your work.”   Poornima Vijayashanker: What about the boss factor? I know for myself as an older sister bossiness is just totally normal for me. But did you have a sense of like, “How do I go and be more of an authoritative figure or disciplinarian” sometimes?   Jean Hsu:   Yeah, most of my—that kind of stuff was in one-on-ones. I feel like one of the areas that I kind of grew into was to bring that to a more group setting and a lot of my feedback would be around like, “Jean has,” like, “We want to hear more from her, like we want…” People wanted to hear more from me. They knew that I was, kind of like, I had an opinion but I wasn't like—   Poornima Vijayashanker: Voicing it.   Jean Hsu:   Voicing it. Actually after I had to figure out that I was going to leave and do my own thing, I kind of became more unintimidated. I was sort of just saying whatever I wanted to say in meetings, which probably actually made me better at my job.   Poornima Vijayashanker: What do you think kind of got you to that level aside from putting in your notice? Did you have a mentor that kind of helped you see these were hurdles or things that were holding you back as you were doing the transition into a leadership role?   Jean Hsu:   Yeah, I mean I had a lot of peer support and my own manager was very helpful and kind of providing that feedback in an ongoing basis. I think for me it was also seeing that when I spoke up in meetings, because one of my pet peeves is like inefficient meetings and—   Poornima Vijayashanker: I agree.   Jean Hsu:   One of the things I would start to do a few years in was like, “OK, I'm just going to get up and start to facilitate the meeting and get people on track and kind of cut people off,” and that came out of a facilitation role that we had at Medium, but sometimes there’s unstructured meetings so I kind of just take that role. The first few times it was like, “I don't know if this is OK. Do people think I'm being overbearing?” But once I started getting feedback of like, “Oh like, thank God you were there to do that,” or people would start electing me to be the facilitator—   Poornima Vijayashanker: You're doing the things they’re thinking of doing, yeah.   Jean Hsu:   Right. I was like, “Why do I just sit here with this sinking feeling of like, ‘Ugh, this meeting, why don't I do something about it.’’”   Poornima Vijayashanker: Oh, that's great, so you were, yeah, naturally gravitating towards taking the reins and steering people in the direction. It wasn't as if you were having one-on-ones with your boss, your manager every week and saying, “I have this problem. How do I deal with it?” You naturally saw opportunities and thought, “I'm going to dip my toe in and see what happens.”   Jean Hsu:   Yeah, I think there was probably a long way I could have gone before. One of my goals—actually I never achieved this—was for people to tell, for my manager to get feedback about me that I was over the top because I knew there was a long way to go.   Poornima Vijayashanker: Oh god, yeah. I always push people for that. It’s like yeah, push to a level of aggressiveness and then they’ll know.   Jean Hsu:   Yeah, because I could tell that it was really myself holding me back and there was so far from where I was and where that was really going to be a problem, and so I kind of wanted to see what was the range there.   Poornima Vijayashanker: Did you ever hit the—   Jean Hsu:   No I did not, I left before.   Poornima Vijayashanker: Something new to aspire to then.   Jean Hsu:   Yeah, maybe.   The choice to stay with the known path   Poornima Vijayashanker: What do you think you've gotten out of the—now, what is it, a year, two years since you've been a leader—what do you think you've gotten out of that experience that maybe you wouldn't have gotten had you stuck to your individual contributor role?   Jean Hsu:   I think there's equal—I was going to say impact and influence, but I feel like even in the IC track there's ways to achieve that and to lead also.   Poornima Vijayashanker: Yeah, we’ll get to that. Let’s talk about the leadership.   Jean Hsu:   As a manager, I felt like it's definitely pretty exhausting to be the person sort of taking care of people and supporting them, but there's a lot of rewards there too, which is like you know that these people have someone who they feel safe coming to and there's issues. I don’t know. It's just like a level of influence that, what I had from my manager, just being able to extend that to everyone else, that was really, that really meant a lot to me.   Poornima Vijayashanker: Any impact on the product or the company that you can speak of?   Jean Hsu:   In terms of the company a lot of my role was also doing engineering operations work, so kind of like team-wide processes, taking what was working on my team or other teams and kind of expanding them to be part of, more of the whole engineering team’s processes. Then something I also saw at Medium was engineering was the largest team. A lot of times engineering would pilot something and then it would work really well and so we’d expand it to the rest of the company. That was kind of cool too, to see that level of like, “Hey, like what's going on over there? They seem to be like pretty well supported.”   Poornima Vijayashanker: Then coming back to the question that you proposed. If you had stayed in your individual contributor role, how do you think it would have manifested itself?   Jean Hsu:   I don't think that was ever really for me, but I think that once I could see that I was capable of doing it, that also made me much more comfortable to switch to the management track, because I really felt like for a while that I wasn't cut out to do the hardcore infrastructure platform work, and they're kind of going that way as my career route. Then I did spend like a quarter or two, really diving deep into platform work, and I could see the path there. Once I could see the path and I was like, “OK, I can see this, if I don't do people management and some of the other things I'm doing and I just focus on this, I could see how I could get to where this person is in five years or 10 years.” It was interesting because just seeing that helped me kind of be comfortable with moving to the management track more fully.   Poornima Vijayashanker: You mentioned there being opportunities for leadership for individual contributors. So for folks who might in our audience choose to stay as individual contributors for the long haul of their career, what do those opportunities look like?   Jean Hsu:   I mean there's a lot of different, even in the individual contributor, I mean some people include tech lead as part of that track. I think in the more purely individual contributor track you can still expand your influence and you can be the architect of larger, larger and larger things or just be able to coordinate. I mean it becomes less individual even though you're still doing the work.   Poornima Vijayashanker: Sure, you’re just divvying it up or directing people, but maybe not responsible for their career.   Understanding the path of a new role   Jean Hsu:   That's right, or you're thinking more about the high-level technical strategy of the company or—I mean, that I think eventually leads to architect or CTO type roles, whereas once I had kind of figured out the paths, I didn't really have a sort of canonical like VP eng, like, “Oh, this is what a VP eng does, and this is what a CTO does.” Had worked at Google where you have no visibility, to those people, Pulse, which we were just all kind of figuring things out, and then Medium where my manager was the head of engineering and it was very much like a hybrid VP eng/CTO role. But once I had figured out what that actually meant, it was pretty clear to me that the path that appealed to me most was sort of the VP eng route.   Poornima Vijayashanker: Yeah, it's nice when you have a little bit more transparency.   Jean Hsu:   Yeah, because otherwise it's just like, “I don't, I don’t know,” like, “I don't know where I'm going because I don't even know what the options are.”   Poornima Vijayashanker: That's a good final set of words for our audience, is getting a sense of what the various tracks look like before you pre-select or make the decision to not participate, just kind of get your facts straight, get a sense of what each role is like.   Jean Hsu:   Yeah, the book *The Manager’s Path* was really good for that because she, Camille, the author, she lays out a lot of the—I like how she lays it out because at the end she talks about all the core things that a company needs and then the different combinations of roles that they use to achieve them, because VP, eng, and CTO can actually mean very different things depending on the company you’re at.   Poornima Vijayashanker: Nice. We'll put a link to it in the show notes. Thank you so much Jean for sharing all this awesome information. I know our audience out there is going to get a lot out of this. For those of you now in the audience, Jean and I would like to know: have you recently done a transition maybe from being an individual contributor to a manager or a leader? What were some of the concerns you had, and how did you go about handling that transition? Let us know in the comments below this video.              That's it for today's episode of *Build*. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to receive the next episode, where we'll dive in a little bit deeper and talk about how you want to manage your concerns around your skills, getting rusty when you go from being that individual contributor to a leader. Ciao for now.   This episode of *Build* is brought to you by our sponsor, Pivotal Tracker.

Jean Hsu formally of Google & Medium and now an engineering leadership coach discusses employee motivation.

Jean Hsu (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeanyhsu) has worked at companies big and small, fast and slow and is now a full-time Tech Leadership Coach and writer. Check out her writing on Medium (https://writing.jeanhsu.com). Jean stopped by the People Stack to talk about her transitions from Junior to Senior Engineer, then to Engineering Leader, and now entrepreneur as she takes on technical leadership consulting clients. Oh, and she's a mom too. Special Guest: Jean Hsu.

Support these videos: http://pgbovine.net/support.htmhttp://pgbovine.net/PG-Podcast-29-Jean-Hsu.htmRecorded: 2017-06-26

Jean Hsu is an Engineer at Medium and mother of a baby daughter.We talked about breaking the pregnancy news to her boss (Twitter co-founder Ev Williams), being the first to use maternity leave and how much the company changed while she was out, and her strategies for parenting equally.Notes@jean on medium@jyhsu on twitterBaby Bumps and Beyond the Bump on redditBaby Connect android/iphone appSponsorHeroku See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.