As the number of people laid off drops each month and the laid-off workers returning to the workforce climbs, this newsletter will shift, too. I still want it to support those on the job hunt, mourning the loss of their role and struggling to position themselves for their next opportunity. However, increasingly, more and more of my connections are back to work. Seeing Salesforce actively recruit “boomerangs” (5 min read), Amazon and others pushing their return to office strategy (3 min read), and a new normal with AI ever present on the job (2 min read) suggests that a shifting strategy for workers is needed as well. The one constant throughout my career has been learning. Whether it’s new technologies, languages, management practices, or business models adapting to change is crucial for success (and growth.)

As for me, I’m preparing for my next role by considering the differences between an Indeed-sized organization and the likely size of my next team. I’m reviewing skills needed to lead an entire engineering organization (where previously I had significant support from HR, Recruiting, Legal, and many more teams.) I’m also up-leveling my skills in adjacent areas like Product, User Experience, and more. Some of this is coming through practice – small contracts and self-assigned projects, some through reading, and some through talking with experts in the industry.

For example, I dove deep into starting my own business last week. I have filed for a limited liability corporation, built the initial website, and set up a basic accounting system. Welcome to the world, Simple And Done LLC. This will let me take more contracts, manage the taxes, and protect my family from unforeseen issues. It’s a new adventure and a steep learning curve, but here’s to hoping this investment pays off.

Shifting Numbers

90% of companies surveyed plan to return to office by 2024 source

3% – estimated growth of the US economy this quarter (a sign that consumer spending has still been strong even with headwinds) source

15% – estimated chance of a recession in the next 12 months by Goldman Sachs (down from the 20% estimate in July) source

Inspiring a Shift in Work

“The great aim of education is not knowledge but action.”—Herbert Spencer

This article in HBR pulls out four key attributes (11 min read and one incredibly unfortunate image of a baby with a sponge for a head) of those who most successfully adapt to the pace of change: aspiration, self-awareness, curiosity, and vulnerability. This line especially jumped out at me, “When confronted with new learning, this is often our first roadblock: We focus on the negative and unconsciously reinforce our lack of aspiration. When we do want to learn something, we focus on the positive—what we’ll gain from learning it—and envision a happy future in which we’re reaping those rewards.” That makes a strong case for keeping a positive attitude and looking for the best in people, processes, and change.

Vulnerability and curiosity are linked in my mind. They come from some of the same places: wondering why, being willing to ask why, and digging in to learn why. Of course, there’s a mindset portion here, too, recognizing our gaps, anticipating our struggles (or even failures), and expecting to get better.

Get Started and Get Better

I broke a rib last week pitching when a line drive struck me in the side. It’s been painful, but after a few days of resting, I realized that there was still a lot I could be doing while recovering. Getting up and moving made me feel much better both mentally (I’m getting something done,) and physically (not the rib, but other areas that were aching to move.) I have to accept my limitations and protect the rib, but getting started made it easier to get better.

“Get started and then get better” was a mantra in the Indeed Incubator and is a great way to tackle problems. It breaks down procrastination. It gets you out of analysis paralysis. It even helps you clarify what’s truly important from what simply seems important. Every beginning starts with a tiny step. Figuring out what your step is, whether it’s in your job search, your new role, or a new project in an old role is the key. The Lean methodology would have you look for the most significant risk and take the first (or the next) step to mitigate, reduce, or learn more about that. That momentum applied every day will easily overcome even the most daunting tasks.

Fun

Final Words

If I can help with your search, please contact me. Please give me feedback on what you like or don’t care for in this newsletter, and I’ll adjust. For total transparency, I have no affiliation with any of the tools, companies, or resources I share. These are my impressions, not colored by any outside influences.

Lacking one full-time job, I’ve been exploring nearly every opportunity that has presented itself. It has sometimes felt like the most aggressive multitasking I’ve done in my career. Here’s a snapshot: I’ve taken a role with an unfunded startup, building the first product and preparing it for launch. I’m preparing for a contract to help a founding team take their idea to a place where they can explore product market fit. I’m meeting with other founders who need support for their outsourcing team. Oh yeah, and I’m searching for full-time jobs, too, which means I’ve applied and interviewed for positions ranging from Director of Engineering to CTO and everything in between. (All of that, and on the personal side, I’m networking to stay connected, coaching a team of 13 and 14-year-old boys in baseball, and all of the other “little things” it takes to keep a family running smoothly…OK, somewhat smoothly.) 

I don’t say this to brag about my multitasking ability or my in-demand skills. I’ve been fortunate to be presented with these opportunities and am thankful for them. I mention it because I’ve read others’ stories of the same challenges, and more and more people I’ve met are piecing together a new balance like this. I don’t think it’s the new normal or a long-term solution (at least for me), but it has been a chance to grow new skills, reflect, and give back. 

Multitasking Economy Numbers (up and down simultaneously)

6pm – the new dinnertime in Meta offices as perks like meals, snacks, shirts, and happy hours return to more regular budgets source

27% Airtable’s latest layoff (following a 20% cut last December.) source

3,300 new roles opening across Salesforce (after their January layoff of ~8,000 people) source

Resume Work

I mentioned a few weeks ago the value of resume reviews. After two excellent reviews by generous friends who have profound knowledge of how to make a resume readable by the applicant tracking systems (ATS), distinguishable from others, and a strong representation of my skills, it is in a much better state. Since Indeed offered ex-Indeedians a free resume review, I decided to get their additional feedback. Overall, it was a good review, and if I hadn’t already had such great feedback, it would have likely been priceless. I strongly recommend getting a professional resume review if you haven’t already done so. 

One caveat. Even with the updated resume, I have not seen any apparent difference in my job search application response rate. I’m trying to find the right measure to understand what impact this has had. Still, at a minimum, the push to make my accomplishments more tangible and data-driven has also brought confidence and clarity in my interviews. 

Overhiring and Avoiding Overhiring 

This read on overhiring (14m read) has both points that resonate for me and takeaways that I strongly disagree with. Still, I appreciate the comprehensiveness and clear action items for engineering leaders. A few key notes:

• The concept (albeit unfortunately named) of a “people buffer” – having new hires available to fill roles – is excellent, as long as you have a clear picture of the work to come and strong prioritization.
• The difficulty of seeing overhiring from the outside vs. the internal measures that suggest overhiring is occurring. 
• Silos help reduce overhiring, clarifying ownership and accountability likely at the cost of innovation.

Fun

Final Words

If I can help with your search, please contact me. Please give me feedback on what you like or don’t care for in this newsletter, and I’ll adjust. For total transparency, I have no affiliation with any of the tools, companies, or resources I share. These are my impressions, not colored by any outside influences.

Last week was a rollercoaster. It came complete with the highs of being at the final stages for only the second time and coaching my son’s baseball team to their season-opening win, along with the low of hearing that the offer went to another candidate. Since then, however, I’ve successfully shipped the MVP iOS and Android applications for the startup I’ve been working with (both firsts for me) and started mid-stage conversations with a few more employers. This fall is shaping up to be very busy and hopefully productive. 

It’s hard to confidently say this is leading to a sunrise because I certainly cannot predict the future, but the traction feels good after so many weeks of waiting on interviews, feedback, and decisions. Either way, I’ve got work to do, and the days and weeks feel short. 

A Mixture of Dark & Dawn Numbers

5+ tech IPOs are looming later this year, signaling some investment and increasing multiples. source

$2,000-$10,000 lost revenue per small business during the Square outage last week source (a gut punch to the small businesses, and Square as well.)

16.6.1 A critical security patch for iOS (similarly available for WatchOS and iPadOS) to remove zero-day exploits from the Apple platforms. source

Dark Encouragement

This will be hard to hear (or do) for some folks, but I will look for jobs on Indeed.com this week. I had written it off as a platform that didn’t have the roles I was looking for, but with my lack of traction on LinkedIn, Otta, and others, it now feels foolish to ignore the dominant player in the online jobs space completely. For many ex-Indeedians, this may be a bridge too far, so my encouragement is to step back and assess what is and is not working and make a change. For me, that’s trying Indeed. For you, it could be giving “spray and pray” a chance (2m read). Or something else entirely. Whatever it is, if you’ve reached layoff week 25 (or more), it’s time to, once again, try something new. Let me know what you try and whether it works!

Developing Velocity

I know it’s en vogue to dunk on McKinsey (after their article “Yes, you can measure software developer productivity” – source). There have been several well-thought-out critiques (15m read), criticisms (14m read), and supplements (10m read) to that article. I won’t take it apart piece by piece, and my goal is not to re-present any of the arguments laid out in those articles. However, given that Indeed did have a unique system of measuring developer productivity through Hindsight (developer productivity index), Peregrine (team productivity index), Delivery-Lead-Time (metric, like cycle time, measuring time from ideation to value creation), and more, I think it’s worth capturing what made that work and where it failed.

It’s natural and, honestly, completely reasonable to try to figure out how to measure developer productivity. Indeed’s systems of measuring code commits, code reviews, tickets completed, impact, time from ticket creation to release, bugs escaped, and more made the team a very data-driven organization. As long as that data remained data, we were okay. Data is not the same thing as information. Information is the derivative of data. You use data and the rate of change in that data to understand something about a system or a person. Information derives into knowledge or meaning that can guide decision-making. And eventually, you can distill this even further into wisdom, which gives you the ability to make educated guesses about the future.

Capturing the data and metrics isn’t bad. It makes it easier for managers to ask questions and learn about their developers and teams. But it isn’t blameless either. That same data makes it easier for managers to give out rewards based on arbitrary effort metrics (e.g. lines of code or the likes.) On the whole, having the measures is a win for the company, but only when coupled with a relentless focus on impact (e.g. outcomes, revenue, percent speed improvements, scalability, security, etc.) and strong coaching that avoids the easy trap of metrics based management.

Fun

Final Words

If I can help with your search, please contact me. Please give me feedback on what you like or don’t care for in this newsletter, and I’ll adjust. For total transparency, I have no affiliation with any of the tools, companies, or resources I share. These are my impressions, not colored by any outside influences.

Many ex-Indeedians are starting month six of post-layoff this holiday weekend, still searching for their next job. The job market is down, layoffs are down, and tech hiring continues to slide (more on those below). While many very educated people are viewing this as a soft landing, the Harry Truman quote, “It’s a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it’s a depression when you lose yours,” feels a little on the nose at the moment. 

The summer slump should be over by now, with hiring managers in the office (finally). I’m putting extra effort in throughout September to refill my pipeline of positions and land a role before the holidays. I’ve also started an equity-only role with a startup, which has been incredibly rewarding. I built the first version of the Android and iOS apps last week. It is incredible how much technology has simplified the process. More on this in a few weeks when it has launched. For now, it’s back to the job search.

Stale-ish Numbers

187,000 jobs were added in August, showing continued cooling in the market. Not alarming, but it’s not a stellar number for job seekers either. source

7,452 more people were laid off in August, almost back to the low point one year ago in 2022.

50% fewer tech job postings July 3 compared to August 28 source

Asking For Help When Things Feel Stale

Layoffs are a solitary game — so much time alone, even if you live with a partner or family. The solo job search, time spent thinking, and so much waiting. Catching up with former coworkers can help a bit, of course, as it’s social and many are in the same boat. Getting resume reviews and referrals helps, too, because it has the feeling of progress. There’s a ton of advice on things to do to keep busy. There is no shortage of direction, but none of these articles felt authentic today. Ultimately, none of these articles or authors (myself included) know what you need like you do. So my encouragement today is to spend some time thinking of what you need and give yourself permission to do it.

I know how hard it can be to do something for yourself (especially if it involves spending money when none is coming in.) I’ve remarked lately that as soon as I have a signed offer in hand I really look forward to taking a week or two truly off. Relaxing the job search, the unemployment documentation, the emails, the LinkedIn replies, and all the rest of it, to just take a day or so for myself. But that’s my plan. Make yours and make it great! Your job is coming soon and having a plan to start it out on the right foot is just as important as anything else right now.

Work Advice For Stalemates

When a decision gets stuck (whether at home or work) it’s crucial to have a strategy for resolving the conflict in a way that preserves relationships. Avoiding an escalation that puts the decision into the hands of someone less involved and knowledgable is a goal. The framework for decision making that is a solid starting point is the “pros/cons/mitigations,” and this worksheet is a simple distillation of the process (1m read time, a lifetime to master). 

Fun

Final Words

If I can help with your search, please contact me. Please give me feedback on what you like or don’t care for in this newsletter, and I’ll adjust. For total transparency, I have no affiliation with any of the tools, companies, or resources I share. These are my impressions, not colored by any outside influences.

Congratulations to the Indian space agency and all of India for successfully landing on the moon! (Sorry, I’m generally a quiet space nerd, but this was cool and relevant.) After years of planning, hundreds (if not thousands) of people involved, and millions of dollars (quite possibly, literally a shoestring budget for NASA), India’s Space Research Organisation (ISRO) successfully touched down a lander and rover on the lunar surface—fantastic teamwork, planning, collaboration, and achievement.

Of course, none of us was planning our layoffs, but that doesn’t mean we cannot continue to be planful about our job search. I mentioned in week #1 that using a tracker (like Notion) would be helpful, and it has proven to be very useful in keeping track of companies I’ve applied to, follow-ups, things to research, and much more. I’ve also mentioned planning for your next role in week #12. 

Today, I want to talk about planning for something entirely new. (Unfortunately, it’s not a job yet.) I’m partnering with an executive coach to co-create a curriculum for managers moving towards directors, VP, and eventually CTO roles. Cataloging leading teams into distinct lessons, reading materials, discussions, models, and homework has been gratifying. Seeing the years of hard-fought lessons and (more often) mistakes I struggled through has crystalized for me the vision and action plan as I embark on my next role. Even if you’re not planning to offer a course in your career field shortly, writing down how you executed and led has the powerful effect of forcing you to explain your thoughts. Give it a shot!

Planning Numbers

79% of profits have outpaced expectations this cycle…but that is based on lowered guidance leading to a 5.2% decrease in earnings per share against spring last year, a signal that more layoffs may be coming. source

2,400 Jobs were cut at Farmers Insurance, or about 11% of its workforce, joining Binance, T-Mobile, Robinhood, and Ford, showing that the tech layoffs may be the tip of the spear still. source

84% -> 50% drop in 6+ hour in-office workdays compared to before the pandemic. Return to office…but for how long?  source

Plan to layoff the work

This coming weekend is Labor Day Weekend in the US. Get out and enjoy that last gasp of Summer. If you’re in Texas, don’t worry too much; we still have “second summer” to look forward to. I know it’s hard, but planning some downtime away from the job search is crucial to mental health. Refreshing your inbox, scanning LinkedIn for the 50th time today, revising your resume for the 90th time (does “resume_final_v2_done_edited.pdf” look familiar to anyone?), and similar activities aren’t going to be the way you get a job. They’re how you give yourself extra stress you don’t need. Plan a break. Step away. Read a book. Do something for yourself. Whatever you do, enjoy the long weekend.

Strategic Planning

As I’m writing the curriculum for this new course, strategic planning was a key topic. I broke it down into four areas where strategy is most important as you move from manager to CTO.

1. Strategic hiring – evaluating the teams’ skills, the business needs, the projected growth, the seniority of the group, and more to create a holistic plan for what roles are needed and in what order.
2. Product Strategy – connecting the company mission and vision with a long-term picture of how the product(s) will evolve and meet customer needs more and more.
3. Strategic Architecture – balancing organizational design with technical design to be able to deliver impactful software in record time.
4. Strategic Growth – growing the culture of the team and company from your current incarnation into the company you need to be years down the line.

I’m sure you will think of other vital areas to consider. I thought of several more to consider while writing today, but nailing these gives you a significant leg up over many other teams in my experience.

Fun

Jobs to be done exemplified (watch the video):

Final Words

If I can help with your search, please contact me. Please give me feedback on what you like or don’t care for in this newsletter, and I’ll adjust. For total transparency, I have no affiliation with any of the tools, companies, or resources I share. These are my impressions, not colored by any outside influences.

For those in California dealing with a tropical storm or others affected by wildfires right now, my heart goes out to you. I’m praying for your safety.

Indian Independence Day was mid-week last week, and I hope everyone who celebrates had a great day. While my wife and I are not from India, our daughter is, so we had a small celebration and a bit of cultural study with the kids about how India gained its independence. It’s filled with mixed emotions. The independence from colonial rule was exciting, but you cannot discuss their freedom without noting the partitioning (separating India and Pakistan.) I’m no expert on this topic, so I’ll leave the political, social, and religious discussions to others, but it points to the challenging emotions that come with independence.

I’ve noted previously that layoffs come with highs and lows; last week was one of those emotional weeks. I’m narrowing in on a potential offer (maybe even more than one), so the vibe has shifted. It’s easy to start getting optimistic about what work could look like in a few weeks and having a new team, but it is also too easy to slip into a funk about what could happen if the offer or offers are not extended. And behind the scenes, you must continue looking for new opportunities to keep the pipeline flowing, keeping you from ever living in the moment. Thankfully, this weekend was filled with quality time and several good friends making it incredibly recharging. Let’s go week #22, I’m ready for you!

Independent Numbers

3.6% – the near record low unemployment rate, a signal that the demand for workers is still strong and that a soft landing instead of a recession may be possible. source

500/5000 Connecticut and company-wide jobs lost at CVS, posing whether bio/pharma is now seeing some of the same pushback Tech did last year. Source

6.6% -> 4.3% Projection headline inflation in 2023 and 2024 by the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) source

Encouraging Independence

As employees grow in their careers, moving through the stages of career growth (3 min read), the goal is to move to more and more independence. Independently writing software, solving problems, leading teams, influencing others, and casting vision. This structure is a helpful way of breaking up roles and responsibilities, even if it does not precisely map to a career ladder. 

As a job seeker, I have become independent in finding roles to apply to. I have apprenticed under a few experts on resume writing and LinkedIn profile curation. I have practiced my interviewing skills (having been on the other side of the table hundreds of times.) I’m actively curating my network and meeting with leaders who can help me (and whom I can help as well.) But, I need to actively develop my career objective and search more for hiring companies, so I’ll lean into those in the coming weeks. Here’s a model that nicely breaks down the Job Seeker’s Stages of a Job Search if you’d like a guide to the process (2 min read).

Independent Encouragement

A few weeks ago, I mentioned writing down ten things you’re good at and reviewing that list each morning. I’ve been practicing this for several weeks, which has been encouraging. I emailed them to myself, and each morning when I check my email I re-read them and snooze them to the next morning. Here’s my list in case it helps inspire anyone else:

1. I built a culture of rapid innovation.

2. I hire well.

3. I lead the team with compassion.

4. I am an excellent partner to product teams.

5. I am a leader in the organization.

6. I help people grow in their careers.

7. I am flexible.

8. I am capable of leading small and large engineering teams.

9. I’m learning new skills in leadership.

10. I have patience to wait for the right job.

11. God is in control and has a plan for me.

Fun

Final Words

If I can help with your search, please contact me. Please give me feedback on what you like or don’t care for in this newsletter, and I’ll adjust. For total transparency, I have no affiliation with any of the tools, companies, or resources I share. These are my impressions, not colored by any outside influences.

Originally posted on https://onlynewmistakes.com/

Quick note: I am officially and actively searching for a job now. I wanted to start with that so that if anyone reading this is looking for a senior engineering leader or knows someone who is. Please forward my LinkedIn profile or contact me and make a referral. Thank you all in advance. 

As an engineer, I never cared for the art of selling. I appreciated what salespeople did for the company, but it was never my interest or forte. Now, as a job seeker, I see how much salesmanship is necessary to prepare for my next role. I must actively sell myself in every job application, cover letter, resume, interview, and more. 

I have been contacted by several resume professionals and digital marketing agencies offering to help improve my resume, freshen my LinkedIn profile, and hold mock interviews for additional practice. I took a free session with one agency last week and obtained several good insights, but the biggest takeaway was that it was time to think of myself as a salesman for my product (myself). Building a brand, creating a presence, engaging with my community, and doing regular outreach to prospects. While sales techniques alone aren’t going to get me my next job, it’s a skill I can hone and one that will undoubtedly lead to better prospects.

Sales Numbers

187,000 new jobs were created in July (per the Bureau of Labor Statistics), less than expected. :/

These July numbers from ADP confirm what I’ve been experiencing (smaller employers are hiring, larger employers less so.)

Encouraging Sales

“When you undervalue what you do, the world will undervalue who you are.” –Oprah Winfrey

I’m sure most of the feedback in this article on selling yourself in interviews (19m read time) includes things you’ve seen before, so I’ll summarize for those who have time to skim. But there’s depth to each of these sections, and I got insights from several, so I suggest reading any passages you can improve on most.

1. Research the company and interviewer(s)
2. Practice explaining your unique selling points.
3. Master your elevator pitch.
4. Present your skills and accomplishments well.
5. Demonstrate your soft skills during the interview.
6. Remember positive body language.
7. Ask insightful questions.
8. Close the interview with a plan.
9. Send a thank you note.

Selling is Social

LinkedIn has a model called the Social Selling Index (SSI) that users can use to see how their LinkedIn profile compares to others on the platform. Their index considers things like how much of a personal brand you’ve created, how you’re contributing to discussions, that you’re connected to the right people, and that you’re building relationships (amongst other proprietary things, I’m sure.) It seems that anyone can get their SSI for free. 

The tool targets those using LinkedIn to support their Sales roles, but since my job right now is to sell myself, investing the time to improve this score seemed like a tangible way to get more traction with employers. I’m starting by adding more personal details to my LinkedIn profile page, taking my role descriptions through Grammarly to help clean up any silly issues, and adding a Projects section to my page to list the accomplishments I’ve been a part of over the last few years.

While I’m at it, I’m also refreshing my resume. I hadn’t updated my resume when I searched for jobs in the last decade, so it was overdue. I created a quick one-page resumé for this job search, but it hasn’t been received exceptionally well (given the employer response rate I discussed last week). I’m giving it some additional attention (and a second page so that I can more deeply explain the impact of the work I’ve done. Hopefully, that will help improve my response rate in the future as well.

Selling Fun

For those with a few weeks left before school starts:

Final Words

If I can help with your search, please contact me. Please give me feedback on what you like or don’t care for in this newsletter, and I’ll adjust. For total transparency, I have no affiliation with any of the tools, companies, or resources I share. These are my impressions, not colored by any outside influences.

Originally posted on https://onlynewmistakes.com/

Note: This week’s newsletter is a departure from the format of the previous 18 weeks. I’m playing with the structure and content to see what resonates. Let me know what you think.

There have been a lot of firsts with this layoff. My first layoff. My first time spending 18+ weeks searching for a job. My first weekly newsletter. As we roll into August, I want to try something else new. The feedback I’ve been getting from readers of this newsletter, on the whole, seems to indicate two things: 1) People appreciate my honesty, the reality of my position, and updates on my work to find a new role, and 2) People have been encouraged by the upbeat attitude and the helpful reminders and links. Those aren’t going anywhere.

All of that is good, but it was getting hard to avoid drifting into mostly meaningless self-help content, and as much as I enjoy that from time to time, just getting a dose of it in my email every week doesn’t seem like something I’d sign up for. Since the last 13 years of my professional career have been in leading teams and organizations, I wanted to mix some of that content in too. I am going back to publishing chapters of my book on running innovation teams. So, here goes everything. I hope you like it. Either way, let me know.

Refreshing Numbers

8,231 additional people were laid off in July, according to Layoffs.fyi, continuing the downward trend since January.

Over 50 tech unicorns were founded during the 2007-2009 recession. Source

28% of Americans have been laid off in the last two years (notably not including the COVID layoffs of 2020). Source

Encouragement – A Refreshment For Your Soul

While vacation was a great time with family, it was also exhausting. We walked five to eight miles daily on top of lots of standing around looking at things and figuring out where to go next. Keeping all four kids satisfactorily fed, rested, hydrated, and safe took a huge physical (and emotional) toll on me. I was ready to get home and get “back to work,” even if that work was job searching.

I’ll confess: I didn’t read this article. I skimmed it (skim time ~1 min, read time ~9 min), but it had what I was looking for: reminders of some good ways to practice “self-care.” Now that I’m back, I’m scheduled for a massage, and I went for a long walk this morning (both for the exercise and the time away,) and I’m about to pick up a novel for the first time in I don’t remember how long. It’s time to get my batteries fully charged; expecting that I’ll be starting a new role this Fall, and I want to start with high energy. 

Please take some time this week to do something for yourself.

Refreshing Teams

I’ve heard many rumors about the post-layoff reorgs (at Indeed and elsewhere), and I’ve been through a few big reorgs in my career, and the biggest thing I’ve learned from them is that reorgs hurt. They hurt a lot. Morale can plummet. Productivity can be destroyed. Even profits and revenue can be negatively impacted by reorgs. 

Of course, experienced managers would only take on a reorg knowing that it will tank their next three, six, or twelve months of metrics because they sincerely believe that the other side of the reorg will more than pay for that investment. But the truth is that I’ve never seen a team stop to measure the loss and gains from reorgs. Not that it’s easy to measure, of course. And even if you did measure it, how do you use those measurements? How do you compare intangibles like morale and happiness with tangibles like retention, revenue, and user experience?

I’m sure there are times when a complete reorg is necessary, just as I’m sure there are times when a whole system rewrite is needed too. But, having much more firsthand experience with system rewrites, I believe in incremental rewrites whenever possible, and I have seen how incremental reorgs (or micro-reorgs if you’ll allow it) avoid much of the “big bang” reorg pain.

Here’s the micro-reorg process in three simple (albeit not particularly easy) steps:

1. Create a shared understanding of what is valuable across the team (especially leadership.)
2. Regularly assess which projects are producing positive ROI vs. those that are not.
3. Adjust staffing levels to maximize organizational ROI as often as possible.  

Micro-reorging several times per year by moving a few percent of the team to better projects/products opens up the possibility to extract more value from key projects and right-size projects that are overstaffed and gives new opportunities to team members as they move to new teams. You have to set expectations upfront of course, and make sure not to move anyone around so often that it negatively affects their career growth.

We ran a program like this with 40-80 engineers over 6 years, and while it wasn’t perfect, we avoided full team reorgs the entire time (assuming you don’t count COVID’s impact in early 2020, which I don’t.)

Career Refresh

At the moment, I’m in the early stages with one sizeable multi-national company and various stages of interviews with three or so startups in Austin. I’m torn between looking for a company the size of Indeed again or jumping back into the wild west that is “startup land.” So, I’m toying with both sizes and looking to see what connects. My passion aligns more with the startup side, but I worry about the financial impact of putting everything in one startup basket again.

Additionally, I’m hitting the networking circuit again hard now that I’m back in Austin. So, if we haven’t caught up in a while, let’s chat and reconnect.

Refreshingly Fun

Final Words

If I can help with your search, please get in touch with me. Please give me feedback on what you like or don’t care for in this newsletter, and I’ll adjust. For total transparency, I have no affiliation with any of the tools, companies, or resources I share. These are my impressions, not tainted by any outside influences.

https://onlynewmistakes.com/

This week is effectively the last week of Summer break for our family. School is still a few weeks away (although that is just around the corner in mid-August). However, the sports tryouts and workouts begin next week, so as a family, we’re gearing up for those. Summer has flown by, and with it ending so soon (okay, we’re in Texas, and the Summer feelings will hang on until October), I’m contemplating how every ending creates a new beginning. Over the last few months of interviewing and networking, enabled by the layoff in March, I’ve been able to meet a lot of people, spend quality time with friends, coworkers, and family, and generally start a lot of new things that I hadn’t had the time to do when working full-time. Something new is just on the horizon, and it’s just a matter of finding it.

Looking Back – The Ending

With employment ending so abruptly, it left most of us in shock. There was a lot of activity to establish new insurance, start the job search, and develop new routines. Now that we’ve been out of Indeed for several months and the severance is running out, many have to reevaluate those decisions again. Several of these tips in this HBR article are things I’ve said before (focus on self-care, use your network and others). Still, the tip to regularly review positive reminders of the value I bring is one I’m putting into practice starting today (5 min read).

Looking Forward – Ending Means Beginning

All this thought about endings has me thinking more and more about what my first day, week, and month at my new job will contain. I’m still in the early interview stages with the companies I am interviewing with, so it may be a bit premature, but I want to be prepared. Many articles on the Internet about your first day, week, month, and beyond mainly include the same things. This article on inhersight.com had some practical tips on implementing conventional wisdom and a few unique thoughts (7 min read).

Today’s Tip

As job seekers, we don’t have many opportunities to provide feedback (to companies, recruiters, or hiring managers.) Record what parts of the process worked well and which could be improved. That way, if you get the role, you can work to enhance the company recruiting process. 

While we’re on the topic of feedback, if you’re still reading this deep into the newsletter, I’d love some feedback on what you like in these newsletters and what you wish it would include or would change. Drop me a line.

Fun Stuff

Final Words

If I can help with your search, please get in touch with me. Please give me feedback on what you like or don’t care for in this newsletter, and I’ll adjust. For total transparency, I have no affiliation with any of the tools, companies, or resources I share. These are my impressions, not tainted by any outside influences.

https://onlynewmistakes.com/