Transitioning from Individual Contributor to a Manager

Transitioning from IC to a Manager Training Video

Is Management right for me?

The best way to determine whether or not management is the track you would like to pursue, is to learn more about what managers do through online training and discussions with Managers.

Online Training

There are some online training courses that describe the managerial experience:

• Elevate Manager Training
• New Manager Foundations
• Succeeding as a First Time Manager
• Management Foundations

Role Playing Manager Real Life Manager Situations

• Role Playing is a very useful tool for a Manager to share Managerial situations with Individual Contributors who are interested in becoming a Manager.
• Q&A with your manager after role playing
• Take on projects that are less procedural to practice those skills

Learn More about the journey from Individual Contributor to Manager

• Review Promotion Docs for team members from your functional area who have recently been promoted to Engineering Managers
• Schedule a coffee chat with team members who have recently been promoted and ask them questions that will help you learn more about their transition and their new role
• See what is expected of GitLab leadership
• Consider a mentor outside of GitLab

Stay Informed

• Join the Engineering Managers Slack Channel
• Read the Engineering Week In Review weekly

Exceed in Your Current Role

• Make sure that you exceed in your current role so you have the technical skillset proven for the next level
• Exceed consistently for a long period of time. See the performance/potential matrix.
• Have patience - growing into a management role takes time
• Ask your manager what the gap is between where you are and where you want to be, and get a plan in place to grow. If your manager does not have a plan, ask for one and provide valid feedback about the timeline
• Get a mentor to help you grow to where you want to be
• Take the hard tasks that no one wants

How can I gain Managerial experience?

Currently as an Individual Contributor, your day to day tasks probably do not include managemement type activities. Below is a list of activities you can engage in to get managerial experience without actually being a manager at GitLab.

Back Up Your Manager

• Serve as a Backup Engineering Manager when your Engineering Manager is Out of the Office, which could include release planning, weekly meetings, and incident coordination
• Attend public meetings with your Manager taking notes (if necessary) and filling in when your manager is Out of the Office
• Monitor the #eng-manager Slack channel for opportunities to work on Managerial related tasks
• Support the Engineering Manager with OKR related activities (Creating, Scoring , Updating)
• Participate in the weekly triage issue analysing incoming bugs for your team
• Monitor the #is-this-known Slack channel and create issues of unidentified bug reports

Hiring

• Participate in Interviews
• Review issue roadmaps and priorities to identify capacity problems
• Serve as an Onboarding Buddy

Growing Others

• Mentor a team member and host regularly scheduled 1-1’s with a Mentee
• Regularly provide feedback in mentoring relationships, team retrospectives, issues, #thanks channel and Team Slack Channels.
• Host a Book Club

Initiate impactful change

• Lead a team or GitLab initiative to improve quality, security, or performance
• Identify an organizational improvement and drive it to completion, such as facilitating training or the first responder program.
• Volunteer whenever the organization is asking for Volunteers, be the first to raise your hand

Strengthen your Efficiency Value

• Work more efficiently by analyzing what you do on a daily basis and improve your own processes
• Identify and implement process improvements that improve your team’s efficiency
• Identify and implement process improvements that improve your efficiency that impacts others outside of your team

Strengthen your Diversity Value

• Join Diversity Inclusion & Belonging or TMRG Slack Channel(s)
• Join a TMRG
• Attend TMRG Hosted Events
• Participate in TMRG or DIB related events / initiatives

Participate in GitLab Meetings

• Have regular meetings with counterparts in security, tech writing, quality, so on.
• Volunteer to host a GitLab Team retrospective
• Volunteer to be the on-call coordinator

Aspiring Manager mentorship pilot program

Background

At GitLab, there are a number of ICs that are interested in learning and growing into a Management role. A number of resources have been assembled to aid in the process of understanding the manager role and to gain the experience required to take it on. While resources are valuable in their own right, having an experienced Manager as a mentor can help guide ICs and provide practical advice and background. These Manager-mentors can aid the IC and shed light on what areas of Management they could focus on and what they can do practically at present to skill-up.

Structure

1. Participation is voluntary for both Managers and Aspiring Managers.
2. Managers may directly mentor up to 4 Aspiring Managers at a time.
3. Manager / Aspiring Manager mentorships are coordinated within the manager_mentorship.yml file.
4. Aspiring Managers should locate a Manager that has an opening available in manager_mentorship.yml and contact them directly.
5. Manager and Aspiring Managers should check in at least every 6 weeks. This could happen async or via Coffee chat.
6. Discussion topics would be completely flexible based on needs and interests.

Benefits

1. Develops and expands mentorship skills among Managers
2. Gives Aspiring Managers a regular touch point for skilling-up in deficient areas
3. Creates stronger networks amongst Managers / Aspiring Managers than currently exists
4. Mentoring directly under Managers should catalyze more competence and confidence in understanding what a Management role at GitLab looks like and how to succeed.

Measuring Success

In order to measure the effectiveness of the mentorship program, a quarterly anonymous survey will be conducted for both Manager and Aspiring Managers.

Additionally, a retrospective conversation will occur 6 months after the initiation of the program aiming to gather feedback on the pilot and determine whether it should continue.