My journey out of management has created some space for me to think about how to grow as a technical leader. There isn’t an easy recipe here. In management, there is a clear list of things for everyone to work on: organization, EQ, delegation, effective status reports, efficient meetings, wrangling backlog negotiations, etc. There are similarly obvious moves on a purely technical track: learn technology X, complete a Staff project, mentor other engineers in their technical ideas and practices, keep track of and evangelize tech debt, improve monitoring and observability, etc.

I spent the last year and a half or so managing an engineering team at Olo. It was a ton of fun. I grew a team from 3 engineers to 8. I led projects of critical importance to the business. I advanced important changes for individuals, teams, and the whole org. I worked with an outstanding Product Manager. I had a excellent group of EM peers. My team performed great, and seemed happy with my leadership.