Second Edition: There are no new ideas
“You’re talking about engineering manager therapy,” is something my own therapist said to me recently when I described what I plan to build here.
And she’s totally right.
A lot of the techniques, approaches and modes of thinking I’m working on in the coming days, weeks and months are familiar mental therapy topics - boundaries, defusing anger, interpersonal relationships and the like.
After all, I don’t want to teach engineering managers how to estimate projects better or accelerate speed of delivery - even if I deeply nerd out about the latter of those while despising the former.
Instead, I want to help new managers especially learn how to manage the people on their team. How to create cohesive teams and aligned goals when they might be more comfortable in bits and bytes.
I hope even experienced managers get something out of my work - and early returns are promising - but my intended audience is the new manager who might find themselves in a bewildering morass of an entirely new job with no support system and even less training.
Now it’s just a matter of doing the work … more to come.
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If the above wasn’t clear, I can also highly recommend therapy. Maybe you’d be luckier than me and have insurance that even covers it!
A lot of my progress over the last several years - from weight loss to running and even having the confidence to start down this road - can be directly tied to having somebody to talk to openly about my hangups, worries, and perceived screwups.
Everybody could use therapy, even you.
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A few quick bits of meta:
- When I first started the blog, I installed the full “online marketer” package of Wordpress - with SEO and analytics packages out the wazoo. Within the first week, I turned off the analytics bits. I know more than most how that data can be abused and decided I didn’t want to deal with it here.
- Similarly, I turned off the archives here in [Buttondown](https://buttondown.email/refer/chrisvannoy) - the email newsletter service I'm using (that link is a referral link that gets you $9 off your first month if you go for a paid plan ... but I'm on the free one). I’d like to think of this newsletter as a conversation, and I don’t like to be loud about it. So, if you’re new here, I’ll try to throw links to past newsletters at the bottom.
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Coming this week:
- On the blog this week, we’ll talk about the myth of unlimited PTO and what the ramifications are when you’re managing employees in such a system. Spoilers: It’s a minefield.
- No guarantees, but I have an outline in another window for an online course … I might make that a real boy in some sense this week.
- Trying to dig into my recruiting contacts to ask them one question: What can hiring managers do to make your job easier? If you have recruiter friends with fun answers to that (or even boring ones!) send ‘em my way.
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Finally, Happy Monday!
I tend to think of Mondays as the fresh start of the week. A fresh journal page for the week, and an empty slate to fill with what’s important to me.
If it’s not that for you, that’s cool, too. There have been lots of times in my life where work was a drudgery and Mondays the devil.
If that’s where you’re at - just remember, tomorrow’s Tuesday! It’s not Monday forever.
And Friday will be here before you know it!
PS: See earlier about therapy, too. Helps with the Manic Mondays and Scary Sundays a lot.
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Past Editions:
[First Edition: Nothing Artificial](https://buttondown.email/chrisvannoy/archive/first-edition-nothing-artifical/)