Not a trick question. And yet, I get the wrong answer all the time.
In 2014, my then-director, asked me this exact question. Naively, like many others, I answered “because I want to help people.” I had been a software engineer at Amazon for 3 years at that point, and always wanted to make the transition to people management. Naturally I didn’t get the job.
Fast forward to 2016, as a newly minted SDM, I was having a conversation with my mentor. This topic came up again. This was the first time I heard the concept of being a SDM described as succinctly and accurately by anyone up to this point.
Being an SDM is like serving as a talent factory, people come in, improve, and then leave.
Our job is to align people’s careers with the goals of the team, and or the company. In the process of growing individuals who report to you, also delivering value for the company.
This process was summarized vividly in the book High Output Management by Andy Grove. He describes two modes of operation for people managers: auditing and mentoring. A manager who audits all the time, without any mentorship is not a good manager, but a slave driver. A manager who mentors all the time without any auditing, is simply not an effective team manager.
What being a manager isn’t, or shouldn’t be, is someone who is obsessed with empire building, constantly finding ways to grow his team or headcount, without any discernible goal for the company in mind. Or someone who became a manager following the mindset of “those who can’t do, manage”. Too often, I come across people who complain about the daily life of an SDE, wanting to escape, to the land of never having to code again. To those people, being an SDM is a means to detach from the technical challenges of their daily job. At a glance, these two types of behavior seems wrong, but what are they missing?
There’s nothing wrong with empire building, however, it may not be in the best interest of the company, or even in the best interest of the SDEs who report to you. A good SDM would always ask these questions:
- Would the cheapest way for the company to get certain things done, be to assign SDE headcount to you?
- Can these efforts be done by another team, who may be building something similar.
- Can the people really get the best career growth they need by reporting to you? Will you have the bandwidth to manage the N+1th person.
- In some cases, are you ready to be a manager of managers?
If the answer to all of the above isn’t a resounding yes, then you are being selfish.
There is also nothing wrong with wanting an easier life. But know that as you become a SDM, you will become responsible for other people’s careers. Sometimes having to lead multiple competing technical projects, which requires your technical insight to make the right judgement call. Becoming a SDM isn’t a way to get less technical, it actually requires you to become more closely attached to more technical areas in order for you to be effective at being an SDM.