YZ: 0:00

Welcome back, VJ. Thanks. So continuing our last conversation. Your first started with managing six people. Yeah. And before you leave Facebook, you were managing 1200 people. Yeah, and that is a quite unique journey. And I'm curious about what are your top priorities when you were IC, manager, director, and VP? Yeah. Are they very different?

VJ: 0:27

Very different. So, when you're an IC, you have a responsibility for building the product thinking really deep about, like, how to build a product, and... A lot of times about the dependencies for the teams that are what in your dependency chain and where you are, the dependency chain for other people. So a lot of times, you know, just going from a junior engineer to a senior engineer, you kind of like start to shape your day to day. It's no longer just about writing code. It says a lot about like dealing with some of the cross functional, cross team collaboration and so on. And you get really effective at that. And you actually gather a lot of influence and that's how you get really good at what you do. Then once you become a manager your responsibilities change dramatically. So it's no longer about just delivering products. It's about actually making your team more efficient. It's about coaching people. It's about growing people. It's about understanding what they care about, what they need and providing that removing roadblocks. So a lot of what I did on a day to day basis was all centered around people. And that's as a line manager. So as a manager of six people, I had like one on ones with them on a regular basis, really knew exactly what individuals. Cared about what they were motivated by and then starting to provide those.

YZ: 1:48

So, I guess, coaching, cultivating people, make people more efficient, effective. But at line managers(level) it's an interesting position because there are some tech leads and there are managers and there are tech lead managers. So what is the biggest difference between a tech lead who tech lead six people versus a manager who manage

VJ: 2:09

six people? Yeah, I firmly believe that you should not manage people if you don't derive, satisfaction from growing people around you that is the most important element of like people management. If you if you don't care about your people then you shouldn't become a manager. So it's not necessarily about like scope, not necessarily about expanding your responsibility. It is literally the 1 thing is about, do you care about the people? Okay. Do you care enough to make sure that they are growing uhhuh, that they're getting what they want, and then you're removing their roadblocks? So it's it's not about like, you know, a lot of times people think about management as a way to get promoted as a way to go up. I take a very different stance. I, I believe that management is a career change. Yeah. If you want to go into management, you better like growing your people.

YZ: 3:00

Okay. I think the overlap is making the business or product successful. But there is a huge part to management that is about

VJ: 3:08

people. All about people. Yeah, and the way you make your business successful is through people.

YZ: 3:13

Yeah, yeah, two different approaches to solve

VJ: 3:15

this. And I know there are lots of other models which have worked in the past. It's just something that I believe very deeply that that's how we implemented it at Statsig as well. In Statsig. If you want to be a people manager Your primary responsibility is to make sure the people around you are growing and coached and actually excelling in what they do.

YZ: 3:35

Okay, then this takes to my next question from the line manager to the, I guess, senior managers, directors. Yeah, they're not only responsible for growing the team, but they are also responsible for the success and failure of the product or the

VJ: 3:50

business. Yes, this is another interesting thing where I learned a lot from Rajeev, who is the CTO of Atlassian, who is like a very good people manager lots of lessons to take away from. One thing that he mentioned was a line manager to a manager of managers. And then to a director or VP these are very, very different sets of expertise that you bring to the table. It's almost like conduction, convection, and radiation. In, you know, in heat exchange, you would have read about like, conduction is where, when you have like individuals where you're having like one on one conversation, where you actually have a touch point with every one of your team members. Wherein you understand deeply how people are motivated what they care about what they're doing on a day to day basis And then you can remove blocks directly. Now, that's the line manager. And when you become a manager of manager, which you actually like now have to understand how to influence indirectly. You no longer are directly talking to people that are on the ground building product. You're coaching managers and then you're teaching them some of these elements so they can then go and actually become effective with their people. So that's convection. So it's kind of like you're passing on heat to a molecule that then goes to, you know, another molecule and, you know, through conduction or another convection actually passes on the heat. So that's kind of like a really a mental picture of like, you know, how. It differs from like line

YZ: 5:14

management. Yeah, and I think important distinction here is abstraction. Now you don't have the direct knowledge of the product of the people. Exactly. You have to rely on other people's judgment. Exactly. Yeah. We always talk about probably one of the most important traits of a leader is judgment. Yes. Then how do you develop for that? Yeah.

VJ: 5:34

So this is one of those, you know, you can read as many books as you want. And there's going to be a set of mistakes that you're going to make no matter who you are. Every one of us, like I've made a bunch of mistakes and you learn from that. An individual, each person, each management style, everyone brings a flavor and that's also going to be different. And so depending on the team that you actually end up building. You're going to have to like, tailor your coaching methodologies to them. And this becomes very apparent when you have six managers, each with a very different management style, and now you have to coach them, and you have to make sure that they're effective in their jobs, and they're actually like able to provide a meaningful coaching experience for their individual reports. It becomes a recursive problem, but you also like learn, you learn a set of shortcuts along the way.

YZ: 6:25

I feel like we can double click on this because I hear like learning, coaching a lot of these keywords, but let's save these topics for the future. Okay. And today, let's go back to the original question. Yes. Like the coaching is important aspect of being indirect or like a director. Yeah. Then what are other responsibilities?

VJ: 6:45

Yeah. So the last part is being a director where you're kind of like managing managers of managers or a large organization. So imagine when I was managing 1200 people, there is really no way I could like get individual connection with everyone in the org. So I have to resort to cultural tools. So you establish what is culture, what is culture really like, you know Culture is a set of unwritten rules that people absorb from others and then learn to establish for them to actually hold on true within the organization. So, as a leader, you establish culture a very good litmus test is like, you can pick any leaf node in your organization and ask the question, like, what would they tell about this organization? What would they share as a unique element about my org or their leader or you know, how everything is run in the company or in the organization. So that's a very good way to like measure how effective the culture, the leaders establishing is permeating everywhere. There's a set of tools like all hands. Those are the tools you use to actually like. Set the vision, set the strategy, set the culture, and then you then rely on, you know, your leaders to make sure that all of those are actually being effectively used and then are all leading towards the right outcomes, whether it is a product outcome or business outcome.

YZ: 8:07

This may sounds abstract, but, I recall people who worked with you at Facebook in your organization or in your teams, there is a very unique culture, especially scrappy is a big part, and you can almost tell, you know, this person has worked with Vijaye before. So last question on top of that. That is how to make the organizations more efficient, but I'm guessing as the business owner or the product owner, a lot of your responsibility is going to be set to the vision or just find out the right solution yourself because nobody else can make those decisions for you anymore.

VJ: 8:51

Actually, I take a very different stance. It's the vision and direction is set by me, right? There needs to be one vision that everybody aligns with one direction that everybody aligns with even competitive landscape. Like, you know, who are we in this competitive landscape? So those are the things that I believe in establishing and that there should be no question about that. That should be extremely clear to everyone in the organization, everyone in the company. If there's a question about that, then we have a bigger problem. Then the individual details are left to the individual leaders to actually resolve. So the next level leader is responsible for taking that vision and then like, okay, in my particular responsibility. How do I strategize? What is the strategy that will align with this vision? And then the next level will break that strategy down into. Okay. What is the quarterly goals or what is the quarterly plan? And then it breaks down into, okay, what is the weekly goal or weekly plan or what are we doing on a daily basis? You know, those are the kinds of breakdowns that will happen and I, I will not be involved in like individual level of like, you know, because there's autonomy brings a lot of satisfaction, motivation in a set of alignment. So you don't want to take those away from the leaders and the individuals. And so, to be clear vision direction is extremely important. Everyone has to be set from the top. But the rest of the details has to be com(ing) from the people that are responsible

YZ: 10:19

for those. All right So I guess taking all that knowledge back to like for example, if I'm a junior or senior engineer Yeah, at an org. If I look at my leader and I want to take my stand or have my opinion of if that is an effective leader. So maybe have a clear vision is very important. Or have a culture. Very strong culture. Very strong culture.

VJ: 10:46

Yeah, I think if you, this is my leaf node test. If you can answer the question, what do my, what does my leader care about? Huh. What do, what does he or she care about in terms of like the, the way I operate? What do I do on a daily basis? You know, what is the vision? What, you know, are we going the right direction? What is the business headed? You know, all of those things. If I can answer that question on behalf of my leader, then I'm, and then that there's an established culture. Then that place is a great place.

YZ: 11:15

Yeah, I think that is a very concrete example. And I have definitely seen effective organizations have this kind of set up. All right. Awesome. Yeah. Thank you, Vijaye. Thank you. See you next time.