Relying on Your Manager Isn’t a Career Plan

Welcome to my newsletter! I'm Dave Anderson, an ex-Amazon Tech Director and GM. I write this newsletter I've called Scarlet Ink, which is a weekly newsletter on tech industry careers and tactical leadership advice.

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At the age of 22, I was walked to my desk at my first software engineering job. I booted up the computer sitting there and asked my manager what I should do.

“Don’t worry! Just figure things out for now.” he replied.

This was quite awkward. My last programming had been in a classroom, where a teacher had given me an assignment with requirements and what they expected from me.

I didn't know how to figure things out. I didn't know who our customers were. I certainly had no understanding of our goals. Heck, I didn't know or understand our business model.

With help and resources, personally figuring things out is a great way to learn. I firmly believe that being put into an uncomfortable position is a source of personal growth. We need that ambiguity to learn how to deal with ambiguity.

However, without any guidance or direction, "figure things out" meant that I wasted months of time. I had a friend at work who had graduated at the same time. Our group was small, and undirected. He and I wrote video games at work together. We took long lunches. We occasionally stumbled on something we should be doing, but mostly we received a paycheck and wasted company resources.

With time, things started to click. We worked at a publishing company, and we met the editors we theoretically supported. They mentioned the problems they were running into, and we said that we could help. With the optimism of youth, we started building publishing tools, and self-directed ourselves.

We built some pretty fancy software (even looking back on it, I'm impressed), grew relationships with our business partners over the years, and eventually added some great value to the company.

However, this was much slower than it should have been. We personally invented how we could be successful rather than receiving direction or coaching.

Six years into my career as a software engineer, I moved into management of the same team. As a manager, I could still remember exactly what it felt like to be lost at my first job. When I moved companies to Amazon, I was also able to observe some highly skilled managers. I learned how (without a ton of effort) leaders can be a powerful force to help someone have a strong start to their career.

If you've read many of my articles, you know that one of my mantras is that we can only control ourselves. As I've said before, we control 100% of our half of our relationships. As you start your career, you're unlikely to be able to choose who your manager is. Your manager might be awesome, skilled, experienced, and will give you great advice. And they might not.

You shouldn't leave your career to chance. I firmly believe that being able to solve our problems is infinitely better than having a great excuse for being a failure.

This issue with coaching and mentorship isn't only for new college hires. You could be 45 years old, excitedly joining a new company for the first time in decades. This new company might have a great onboarding process. But it might not. Your new manager might be awesome, or not. Having an ability to self-drive your career will always be valuable. And again, that's much better than having a great excuse to fail.

Make connections.

A great manager would immediately introduce you to the people you need to know. This is lovely and helpful.

Don't wait to see if your manager is going to do that for you. I'm convinced that every hire, from college graduate to experienced employee, should always prioritize meeting everyone important in their first week at a new job. This is so time-sensitive that you should do this before almost everything else.

I wrote an article previously about hitting the ground running. It includes a process to follow with some examples.

If you've met with a couple of dozen people in your first week, you won't be alone any longer. You'll have a long list of people you can collaborate with to get advice and assistance. They'll be able to help you in your first meetings, give you advice to avoid new hire stupid mistakes, introduce you to yet more essential people, etc. And if a new hire comes to me and says, "Hey, I'm on day 3 of my new role and I was told that I should really prioritize meeting you." - This will make a great first impression.

What if your manager isn't actually bad at their job? Well, if your manager says, "Hey, I want to introduce you to Anne", you'll be able to say, "Oh yeah! I know Anne. I met her yesterday." Your manager will be happy that you're on the ball. It's a great way to make yourself stand out.