Zingers for the end of the year
In the spirit of a playful new year mood, we will discuss some of my favorite professional zingers.
Hi, this is Peter with the next edition of the Professional Manager newsletter. I publish this newsletter to illustrate what decent, seasoned, professional engineering management could look like.
As we approach the end of the year, I wanted to thank you, Dear Reader, for subscribing to my newsletter. I hope you have enjoyed my writing! In the spirit of a playful new year mood, I will write down some of the zingers I have been using throughout my career as an engineering leader.
Why Zingers?
It has helped me to establish my brand of engineering leadership. Being true to myself allows me
to bring my whole self to work.
to have more fun.
to show my colleagues who I am (besides being a stone-cold professional manager).
to make beautiful, lifelong friendships with some of my wonderful colleagues.
My zingers are another method through which I teach others. I constantly find out that some of my colleagues who grew into senior positions started to quote me regularly. I invite you also to steal from me liberally! Without further ado, I have some of my favorite zingers here.
(Disclaimer: I invented some of the below. I stole some of them from previous colleagues, whom I give credit to when interacting with them. Since this newsletter anonymizes my engineering leadership experiences, I will not fully attribute credit to my inspirations.)
Don’t f*ck it up!
That is the one golden piece of advice I have been giving since leading teams. This one only comes out for momentous occasions. My intention is always to lighten the mood before critical moments. I often envision my team and I getting ready before a big sports final. Me giving a final speech before the team takes the pitch, and this is what I tell them. We all laugh and then execute for our employer as professionals do.
As a side note, this quote predated RuPaul by about seven years. While I find it flattering that some would confuse me with RuPaul, they didn’t influence me - perhaps I influenced RuPaul!
I like money, APIs, and fast.
Grounding the team in simple metrics and nomenclature can do wonders. The above three terms can be interchanged with other simple terms like - green, SLAs, and winning. An ex-CTO of mine used to say this sentence regularly. Sometimes, he also mixed in a statement like “I like big numbers, folks.”
I don’t know what I am doing here.
The same ex-CTO used to say another one that I thought was brilliant. He’d sometimes tell us in small forums, “Guys, I have no idea what I’m doing here, but we need to figure this out together.” I loved this statement's humility and charm, so I adopted it. This statement acknowledges the reality that I often tell my organizations - “Engineering leaders are nothing without an exceptional team.”
Hallucinate with me for a moment!
The hat-trick of zingers comes from the same ex-CTO. He used to tell me, “Peter, hallucinate with me for a moment.” At the time, I remember thinking, “what are we going to do, eat some mushrooms?!” This gem is handy when I have a crazy idea to bring to my organization.
The two things that matters are users and money.
As we discussed, pursuing business value is critical for all engineering teams. Simplifying the potentially obscure “business value” terminology could go a long way. When we ground ourselves in simple terms, it becomes easy to reason about what matters to us as a business.
Feedback is a gift.
I used to think this was so cheesy, yet I grew to love this sentiment. Offering feedback means that the other person cares enough about you to give you critical feedback - whether that’s about your performance, career, contributions to the business, or perceptions about you. Whatever it is, we can only improve if we get honest and unfiltered feedback. Getting that sort of feedback truly is a gift.
Don’t tell me the famous “s” word.
Our bosses don’t pay us to use the “s” word frivolously at work. You know the “s” word I am talking about, right? “Should.” As in,
I think this should work.
I should be able to do that.
We shouldn’t have any problems.
My team should understand that.
We don’t get paid for “should.” As engineers, we like certainty and try our best to guarantee it. Expunging the “s” word from any organization’s terminology should be a nice evolution!
An anti-zinger for ages
Another ex-CTO I worked with was in the habit of making the engineering organization chant together at all-hands meetings. Making engineers do group chants may have been popular in the early 2000s. However, it is not a strategy I endorse for any professional organization I am involved with. I have never met an engineer interested in group chants at work.
Summary
Thank you for reading my newsletter this year! I enjoy this small contribution to help evolve (engineering) management as a practical, enjoyable, fun, professional vocation. If you endorse my newsletter, I always appreciate you throwing me a like and forwarding my writing to your friends and colleagues. I also welcome dialogue and your feedback (remember, it’s a gift!) on each edition. Happy 2023!