DEV Community: Merit

How Merit Can Unblock Your Career

Kirk Fernandes — Thu, 27 Jan 2022 00:45:49 +0000

We’re almost done with the first month of 2022, and the Merit team is taking time to reflect on 2021. We wanted to evaluate how well we’re measuring up to our mission of democratizing networking and professional development. We’re lucky to have a growing and active user base who can tell us — indirectly — what they’re gaining by using Merit.

When are people most likely to reach out for help from a mentor? At Merit, we’ve learned that when seeking mentorship, people want to debug their career — something isn’t working quite as expected, or they’re not sure how best to tackle a problem, or they really need advice before a big interview or presentation.

Collectively, these mentors and members clocked in thousands of hours of sessions where they discussed career growth, skills development, and challenges at work.

With this many hours of sessions completed, we started wondering, if we’d gotten to listen in these Merit sessions, what were we most likely to hear? What kinds of advice were members seeking, and how did mentorship help them with their challenges?

Since we don’t record mentorship sessions, we reviewed the anonymized data from hundreds of sessions’ requests and feedback — where members write what they’d like to discuss in the session and share what they learned after. We also examined the “motivation” tagged to each session as well as the motivation’s associated “topic.” From this data, we’d gathered thousands of data points to look at to tell us more about why Merit members are seeking help on the platform and what they got out of their time on Merit.

Why were members seeking mentorship on Merit in the first place? Merit broke down these motivations into training, job searches, getting promoted, and finding emotional support. Most sessions (41%) were motivated by training, like learning how to launch products and measure success, developing product strategy, collaborating cross-functionally, writing documentation, and coding. This was closely followed by job searches (37%), where members might be considering changing roles, looking to break into tech, and receive practice mock interviewing. Members were also looking for advice on getting promoted (13%) and finding support (10%), whether it be as a woman in tech, someone working remotely, or navigating life post-merger or acquisition.

With training, where users want to level up their skills within their discipline, they were split fairly evenly between product vision and strategy (13%), launching products and measuring success (11%), UX and UI design (10%), year one in product (9%), and building a design process (9%).

Those looking for help with their job search were overwhelmingly seeking advice on breaking into tech (31%), getting resume and portfolio review (31%), and mock interviewing (30%). As a matter of fact, breaking into tech and mock interviewing were our two most popular session topics overall, both at 11%.

When people were searching for support, they overwhelmingly wanted advice on dealing with imposter syndrome (44%) and being a woman in tech (44%), two challenging areas for underrepresented groups in tech.

What were the most popular topics for these sessions across motivations? Just over half (52%) of all sessions were tagged to just one of seven topics:

Resume and portfolio review: 11%
Breaking into tech: 11%
Mock interviewing: 11%
Product vision & strategy: 5%
Launching products & measuring success: 4%
Being a woman in tech: 4%
Dealing with imposter syndrome: 4%

Based on this data, it seems like most folks on Merit are looking to enter tech — and get help with the nitty-gritty of doing so, like having a polished resume and acing the interview. After that, mentors and members are discussing two of the meatiest topics in software development: deciding what to build, getting your product to the market, and assessing how well it did. ****And as always, those in tech face the challenges of feeling like imposters and being part of underrepresented groups.

Beyond the topics and motivations tagged to sessions, the comments members wrote provided a few key insights:
We repeatedly saw members that members looking to break into tech wanted to discuss how to do so without a technical background.

For those members already in tech, we saw that switching disciplines can be an exciting opportunity. The most sought-after new role? Product manager.
Interviewing is hard! In a tie with breaking into tech, the majority of sessions were about mock interviewing, resume review, and interview prep.
Moving into a more senior role or being a manager for the first time is an opportune moment to reach out for mentorship and guidance.
Although many sessions were about breaking into tech or learning the building blocks of how to be a good product manager, designer, or software engineer, we also saw more senior folks looking to become better managers, learn how to build out teams, or level up their cross-functional influence.

Based on these sessions, we noticed a cycle that folks seeking mentorship tend to follow: looking for a new job, building skills while in the job, getting career advice, looking for a new job or role.

Merit, although helpful for those early in their career looking to grow, serves tech workers over the course of their career, from the job search to getting promoted to leveling up their skillset. Finding mentors is something that spans the whole journey — we’re always moving between being able to mentor and needing mentorship ourselves.

After the session, our members left feedback highlighting how much they were able to learn from their calls with mentors. We wanted to include some key quotes from our members — how they’re using Merit, in their own words.

Job Search
“I recently got a job offer and wanted to discuss the opportunity. I’m looking to hear how you decide about making your next career move.”

Product Manager, US

“I’m currently looking to transition internally to an APM role, from platform engineering. I think, being an engineer comes with advantages but also disadvantages when transitioning to a product — specifically with how problems are approached.”

Software Engineer, Canada

Career Advice
“Looking to go through his first promotion cycle and is unfamiliar with how to make a case to his manager for getting the promotion”

Software Engineer, US

“I am interested in learning how to think about my career as a PM.”

Product Manager, US

Skills Building
“Methods around building a system/pipeline for handling injections / ad-hoc requests.”

Junior Software Engineer, US

“I’d love to get some advice on how to do a bit of roadmap planning given tighter constraints/budget. Essentially balancing improving the existing product and making intellectual progress on a few feature/product within the product.”

Product Manager, US

“I’m volunteering as a PM on a side project, would love to talk to you about tactics for communicating well with engineers and maintaining our sprint velocity”
UX Researcher, US

“I was just hired as the companies first UX Designer. I would love some guidance on how to start building processes and keep growing.”

UX Designer, Canada

Design
“I learned how I’d be evaluated from a product design manager’s perspective on creative challenges, and also another way to think about these challenges and how I can create my own structure to showcase who I am as a designer and how I think.”

Product Designer, US

I learned how the design team works cross-functionally with PMs, Engineers, Researchers, and other Designers. Learning this from someone reputable and from an established company is great in benchmarking how I should work cross-functionally.

UX Designer, US

Landing a job and transitions
“Secondly, [the mentor] reassured me that getting a PM job is really hard. I am glad to learn from her transition from tech lead to PM and how she navigates through the job hunting process.”

Software Engineer, US

“I learned about the transition from finance to product, how the product differs at different stages of startups, what type of product roles to recruit for, and what traits define a successful PM.”

Product Manager, US

“As a career transitioner, I was not familiar with the typical software engineering data structures/algorithms interview. However, [the mentor] gave excellent advice and tips on how to prepare for the software engineering interviews, which resulted in my landing an offer!”

Software Engineer, US

Asking for help and gaining confidence
“I learned that it’s okay to reach out and ask questions when you’re confused, even though you might be worried about looking like an amateur.”

Product Designer, Canada

“I needed some reassurance about my career direction, and Allison provided a safe environment to express my struggles dealing with imposter syndrome. I left the call with renewed energy to charge through my career with more confidence.”

Experience Designer, Canada

With its mentorship platform, Merit removes the barrier of talking to senior leaders in tech. Rather than having to sift through LinkedIn, send cold reach-outs, and be left wondering how to get advice, Merit members can quickly find someone with expertise, schedule a call, and unblock their career.

The how & why of being a mentor

Kirk Fernandes — Sun, 16 Jan 2022 22:15:39 +0000

As part of building Merit, a platform for useful tech career advice and mentorship, we’ve facilitated thousands of hours of mentorship. We have hundreds of mentors who have opened up their calendars and time to mentor others. Here is what we’ve learned about why people mentor and the best practices to approaching mentorship.

This post will be useful to you if you are thinking of being a mentor and want to know how to be successful in it!

Why do people mentor?

We’ve found that people naturally want to mentor but don’t necessarily understand why. For some it’s purely an enjoyable act; for others, it’s a mutually beneficial relationship. If you’re someone considering mentoring, these are the most common reasons why folks mentor in the tech industry:

Give back: The main reason folks offer their time is to give back. Oftentimes mentors want to share the help they received so they can give back to their community and the industry at large.
Learn from others: Through mentoring, you both clarify your thoughts and also learn from the next generation. In tech, methods and technologies move fast.
Meet new people: In a new, remote-first world, mentorship is a way to meet people and network outside of your own communities and events.
Practice mentorship: If you want to become a better manager or a stronger mentor, the best way to improve is through practice. The more you mentor, the more you’ll learn the best ways to ask questions, give advice, and build relationships.

The best mentors we’ve found rarely think of themselves as mentors. They often think they aren’t experienced enough or have a senior enough title. What we’ve found is that yes, there are requirements to being a mentor, but it’s not as rigid as you think.

What are the requirements for being a mentor?

Minimal viable experience: This is not a hard-and-fast rule. Having a few (3+) years’ worths of experience is enough. The measure is if you feel you know enough about a role or industry to give thoughtful feedback. Although having a few years in tech is helpful, don’t focus too much on specific titles or length of experience.
Ability to listen and share: Listening closely to others and their problems is key to being a good mentor. Conversely, being able to share what you’ve tried in the past and what did/didn’t work is a core component of providing mentorship and advice. You don’t have to have all the answers, but rather you should create a space where folks can create their own solutions.
Time available: Mentorship, no matter how you structure it, will take some time — the time involved could range from a few hours a month to a few hours a week. The commitment is up to you, but it is a commitment.

Should I try to mentor folks one-off or try to structure our relationships?

When first meeting a new mentee, try to focus on having a few impactful sessions before deciding whether to have a long-term mentoring relationship. If there is a mutual need/want for developing a mentorship relationship, you can schedule a recurring loop.

You should default to one-off sessions but allow for follow-ups. It’s up to you to decide if you want to continue a conversation. You can always suggest they update you before they book more time with you.

How to find mentees? How to get started? How to meet with mentees?

There are many places to find mentees. You can offer your time within the existing communities of which you are a part: companies, alumni groups, community groups, etc. The pro is that you can help the people you already know or work with.

You can also use mentorship platforms like Merit: You can put in your preferences (calendar, discussion topics, and preferences), and Merit will create a shareable profile and handle the rest: finding mentees, scheduling, and collecting feedback. We created the platform to handle these logistics.

Now that you understand the motivations, qualifications, and general structure of mentorship. The question is: how do I be a good mentor?

What is a good format for a mentorship session?

A good default: is 45 minutes over video. We find that not all sessions need all the time, and how long they take depends mostly on the topic. More specific sessions may take only 20 minutes, while more open-ended questions will typically take the full time. We like to joke that if someone’s asking how to do a job search, that may only take 20 minutes. But if they’re asking what to do with their life, that may take a bit longer.

What do good mentorship sessions look like?

People are coming to you for mentorship because they aren’t able to ask for advice at work or they haven’t found anyone else in their network to talk to. You can think of each mentorship session as a hierarchy of needs:

Feeling comfortable: First, establish a safe space where people feel like they can ask questions. Opening up about your work or career problems is an inherently scary thing.
Feeling heard: Often folks don’t have anyone they can talk to about these problems, so getting to the point where they can talk about their problems and know the message is received is a key step.
Feeling motivated: Once you understand the problem, their ability to make progress might be a question of motivation or empowerment. Helping folks feel optimistic or empowered is a prerequisite to arriving at a solution.
Having options: This is the brainstorming, ideation, and collaboration phase so that the mentee can leave with some actionable ideas or next steps. You yourself don’t have to come up with these yourself.

Now that you have a good sense of the good mentorship sessions, here is how to approach before the session, during, and after.

What to do before a session?

If you’re doing a mentorship session over a video call, we’ve found the following to be helpful:

Review the description and write out any relevant stories or lessons.
Review their LinkedIn to get a sense of their background.
Make sure you are in a sound-proof room, can talk freely, and have good light.
Turn your video on and make sure your mic works.
Close any distracting apps to avoid multi-tasking — it could look like you’re not paying attention.

What should I do during a session?

Ask questions: Ask questions to clarify or understand, especially if you are meeting the person for the first time. Asking questions is always a way to build trust and comfort. It’s about validating your assumptions and giving the other person space to share context.
Share stories: The beauty of a mentorship conversation is that you can talk to someone in a related role without the potential conflicts that could come with working directly with the person. That means that sharing stories is integral for these conversations. The stories of your career successes and failures paint an easy-to-digest lesson for the other person to take home. Merit has found that many of the biggest lessons shared during a conversation come from sharing the story of your prior experiences.
End with an actionable item: Try to end the call with an action item to do next. This ensures the person leaves with more options than they started with. It also makes it easy for them to follow up with how things went.

After the session

Reflect on what you thought was helpful.
Ask for feedback.
Share any resources or links that you mentioned.

If being a mentor sounds interesting to you, we strongly encourage you to check out mentorship platforms for tech workers, such as Merit.

Only takes a few minutes and handle all the annoying parts of mentorship (feedback, scheduling, and follow-ups) and enjoy the fun part (helping and meeting people). Apply here.

Navigating Your Career

Kirk Fernandes — Fri, 14 Jan 2022 22:52:33 +0000

The end of the year is a time of reflection. It’s a chance to ask, “How has the last year gone? What have I achieved? What do I want for next year?” As you wrap up your 2021, you might be looking specifically at how your career is progressing. Are you tracking towards your goals? Are you happy with your career trajectory? If you’re not, how can you get back on course?

Getting answers to these difficult questions is inherently introspective. Only you have the answers, and only you can do the work of reflecting. No two people think about their work, their goals, and the vision for their career in quite the same way. At first, the prospect of setting and following career goals can seem daunting, but with some principles for thinking about your career and some rituals to regularly assess your progress, what seems amorphous can become concrete and actionable.

A caveat is that things change — all the time. You change. Your work changes. The world changes. Your situation changes. How you feel today might be different from how you feel tomorrow. You might have to move across the country, receive an unexpected job opportunity, get laid off — or suddenly have to endure a global pandemic. It’s important to know when your situation or you have changed and to adapt over time. But no matter what’s happening personally or what choices you’re making professionally, you are charting a course and navigating toward something.

It’s also possible that perhaps you haven’t thought too much about your career goals — yet. Early in your career, you might not yet know if you’re on the right path for you or where you’d like to be in 1 year, let alone 5. You may not even be sure how to start thinking about something as big and vague as “What do I want to do long-term? What is my ideal working situation? How do I get there?”

In this article, the Merit team presents three principles and three rituals to help you approach your career in 2022 — and beyond.

Principles

When navigating your career, you first have to decide where you want to go — or at least in what direction you want to head. Determining your direction leans on three principles: understanding what work means to you, learning about your work likes and dislikes, and then being fixed on a mission while being flexible on the details.

Understand what work means to you: A first step in navigating your career is writing a work mission statement by understanding what role work plays in your life (like everything, this might change!). For some, work fulfills a personal mission, like being creative, following their curiosity, building cool things, or solving difficult problems in an industry they care about. For others, work is a way to earn enough to fund their passions outside work and doesn’t play a central role in meeting emotional needs.

One way to think about these needs is what is at the core of your desire (and need) to work? What motivates and drives you? Leslie Luo, a senior product designer at a large tech company, describes it this way, “At the end of the day, I need something that really drives and digs into my curiosity.” What do you need? This is your mission in working.

An important distinction is that these needs are aspirational and separate from fundamental needs like affording food and housing or, depending on your situation, maintaining your immigration status. The process described here focuses on once all your basic needs are met.

Evaluate yourself on the axis: Even if the mission of your work is to fund your passions outside of your day job, that day job fills the majority of your working hours, so you want to avoid dreading your day-to-day.

Whether your tech career fulfills your personal mission or not, building an understanding of what you like and dislike as well as the kind of work you do well at will help you determine what kind of jobs and work are best for you.

In an article for First Round on driving career conversations, Molly Graham, formerly of Google and Facebook, encourages keeping four lists as you work, which we at Merit have organized into a matrix. Plot out your work activities and tasks on a scale from “Things I hate” to “Things I love” and from “Things I’m exceptional at” to “Things I’m bad at.”

Your career matrix

Your ideal job’s responsibilities are an overlap between what you love doing and what you’re exceptional at.

Look for roles that overlap between what you love and what you’re great at

However, it’s not uncommon to end up doing a lot of things you’re exceptional at but hate doing. As you become more senior, your work may have a greater overlap between “Things I hate” and “Things I’m exceptional at.” Avoid these opportunities — it’s okay to turn down roles or jobs you’d excel at but not enjoy.

Be cautious with opportunities that play to your strengths — but emphasize your dislikes

As you fill out the matrix above, you can take it to your manager so that you can work together on incorporating more of the work you enjoy and do well in.

Be fixed on the mission but flexible on the details: For Nastia Kobrazenko, Senior Brand Designer at Policygenius, that meant knowing what she wanted in her work but letting the details form over time: “I knew I wanted to do some sort of creative career, but I didn’t know exactly what that would be.” She went between illustration, animation, and design work and experienced trial and error before landing in design.
Consider “open” and “closed” variables to provide some concrete parameters around staying true to your mission while remaining open to many opportunities. Open and closed variables indicate what you’re willing to compromise on, and what’s non-negotiable.

Kirk Fernandes, the co-founder of Merit, describes this in the feeling he had about working in mentorship and representation in tech: “I was very adamant — once I realized I wanted to work in this space, on this problem, I was pretty variable on everything else.” If you’re an engineer, you might be intensely driven to build interesting technology, but the industry itself may be less important. If you’re a product manager, you may want to be solving problems in a specific space but be more flexible on the size of the company.
Below is an example of a product manager’s potential “open” versus “closed” variables:

Rituals

However, what you learn from thinking about these three principles isn’t one-and-done. You may learn to love something you previously hated, and you may come to dislike work you once loved. Each job, project, and role will add data points to your matrix. Points within the matrix can migrate quadrants or move along axes. Regularly reassessing is key. You can stay in tune with yourself and your goals by checking in regularly, gathering data, and setting short-term goals. Every season, set aside a week to reflect and do these three things.

Check-in on a set cadence: At least quarterly (and maybe more often!), write down and answer the following questions, which are a mixture of recommendations from Graham and Fernandes:

What were the highlights and favorite things I did of the past quarter? Why?
What moments or weeks did I feel my best?
What did I feel like I could keep doing the same set of things over and over and be happy?
When did I feel drained or depleted?
When did I feel bored?
When did I feel like my worst self?
What was I grateful for? Why?
What am I looking forward to next quarter? Why?
What would make the next quarter really great? Will I think that will happen — or not?

Keep the responses to this list in a central place: a Google Doc, an Evernote, an old-fashioned physical notebook. Occasionally re-read previous entries and try to spot trends and patterns.

An important question to revisit is “What am I looking forward to next quarter? Why?” Fernandes notes, “You should always have something to look forward to, and if you don’t, that’s a bad sign.”

Through these check-ins, you may find that you’re not happy in your current role. First, ask yourself why. Is this situation temporary or permanent? Maybe you’re working on a project you really don’t like — but it will end in a few weeks. In that case, it might be worth sticking it out. But maybe the company’s culture has shifted, and you no longer feel comfortable in the new environment. If the culture doesn’t look like it will course-correct soon, it might be time to move on.

Get perspective from your network: This reflection doesn’t have to happen in a vacuum. Your friends, manager, coworkers, and mentors can all point out times that you seemed happy, demotivated, or frustrated. Feedback from those closest to you can provide strong indications that you’re enjoying where you’re heading or that maybe you need to move in a new direction.

Set short-term goals and ask why: Knowing what you’d like your career to look like in 5 years can feel impossible. Tech moves at a rapid pace. The jobs and career paths of today may look dramatically different tomorrow. A project at work may show you that you really love something you thought you’d never enjoy. Instead of fixating on exactly where you think you should be in 5 years’ time, set a goal for the next 6 to 12 months — and ask why. If the goal is to get a promotion in the next review cycle, is that because you’ll be taking on new responsibilities you enjoy? Because it’s a stepping stone to your long-term ideal role?

Making a Job Change

If, after reviewing your self-check-ins, you realize that your job and work is no longer the right fit, how do you move forward? You can’t rely on your manager and coworkers to help you decide what opportunity would be the best next step for you. Before you begin searching for a new role or sign an offer, it’s helpful to think about “push” and “pull” factors.

Push factors are those that are forcing you out of your current role. You can ask yourself, “What are you running away from?” Maybe you’re looking for growth and a more senior role, and at your current company, that won’t be possible for over a year. Maybe being aligned with the company’s mission is critical to you, and the company’s mission has recently changed.

Pull factors, meanwhile, are what is drawing you toward a new opportunity. If curiosity is at the core of your career path, then maybe you’re attracted to roles that pique your curiosities. If you’re looking for a role that better aligns with commitments outside work, you might be pulled toward opportunities that offer a stronger work-life balance.

In the lists below, a hypothetical engineer lists out their personal push and pull factors:

It can help to write out your criteria for a new opportunity and what those would look like in practice. Andrew Hoang, Product Lead at Ōuro, was highly specific when searching for his latest role. He narrowed his criteria down to five aspects and included both the principle that mattered to him and how it would look tactically. For example, he wrote that he wanted to allow himself “to be crazy strong-minded about how the world should work and execute on that. Tactically, the company is still early and fairly high growth.” For someone who wants to learn from more senior folks in their field, this might mean looking for a larger, later-stage start-up with a fairly large, mature team in your discipline.

Get help

If you feel like your manager isn’t giving you the guidance you’re looking for, or if you’re searching for a new job and don’t know quite what to look for next, reaching out to a mentor is a great step. Merit mentors can help you with navigating your career, setting goals, and reflecting on your career journey.

Interviewing for your first engineering job after a bootcamp

Randy Brown — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 18:46:50 +0000

You did it! You're officially an engineering bootcamp graduate. You've gone through the courses, learned about for-loops, and built an app. Now you're brushing up your resume and applying for internships, apprenticeships, and jobs.

With more bootcamp grads joining the market every day, nailing the interview and impressing the company is crucial. After interviewing engineering managers and bootcamp grads, we compiled a list of some steps to leave an impression—increasing the likelihood of receiving an offer at a company that will help you grow into the next phase of your engineering career.

Keep your skills fresh

During bootcamp, you learned a whole new set of skills and languages. Don't let them fade away: keep working on the projects you started in bootcamp or begin new ones! When we spoke with engineering managers, they repeatedly brought up that they like to see interviewees continuing to work on projects and thinking critically about what features to add.

These projects don't have to be full-blown apps. Recruiters are interviewers are looking to see that you're pushing yourself to keep learning. Hiring managers want to see that not only are you growing in your technical skills, you're also thinking beyond just coding. Demonstrate that you can think critically about what you're building by asking yourself, "How would users want to interact with this feature or application? What can I do to make it easier to use or more valuable?"

"[Applicants who create additional projects] are challenging themselves technically or thinking uniquely from a product perspective, so their trajectory would continue to be high [once hired]."
—Dan Ubilla, Senior Engineering Manager at Asana

Add some new skills, too

But it's not just about strengthening what you've already learned: once you start your new job, you'll most likely need to set up your developer workspace and begin working with a production-level application.

More than one engineering manager we spoke with recommended learning the basics of the command line and how to use Github and Git. There are some great online tutorials for learning the command line, Git, and Github basics.

"The more evergreen [skills] you can come in with, the better, like what a pull request is and how to make one on Github...[be] comfortable with basic commands on the command line and understanding how to install tools, because most engineering tools are installed using a command."
—Alex Kaminsky, Senior Engineering Manager at Google

Ace the interview

Engineering managers highlighted a few key skills they look for when interviewing bootcamp grads:

Collaboration and ability to work in a team: Most likely, you're going to be working with some combination of other engineers, a product manager, and a designer, so interviewers want to know that you can work well with others.
Ability to explain your thought process when solving a problem: Interviewers don't want to just know that you can solve a problem—but also that you can state clearly how you came to a solution. Be sure to show your work and share how you're thinking. The approach matters as much as the conclusion.
Willingness to admit what you don't know and sharing an eagerness to learn: Interviewers know that you're very early in your career. They don't expect you to have all the answers, but they do want to know that you can admit what you don't know while expressing how much you want to learn. Lean on the research you've done about the company and your own experience to say that you don't know but you're excited to learn more.
Not afraid to ask questions: When you start your job, you're going to have a ton of questions, so companies will want to make sure you're able to ask for help when you need it. The last thing you want to do is start a job and get stuck on a problem for weeks on end.

To nail the interview, follow an age-old piece of advice: practice, practice, practice.

Find the right fit

Not every company will be the right fit for you. Your first gig out of bootcamp should help you learn, grow, and be ready for your next job. Make sure that wherever you're going can offer mentorship and support and that the company has a strong culture.

There are a few questions you can ask to gauge what working there will feel like and what the expectations of you will be.

"What does success look like in the first 90 days?" This question can tell you whether the company expects you to be ready to start writing production-ready code in the first week or if you'll have time to ramp up. Additionally, it'll also signal if the company has a strong onboarding program and resources dedicated to ensuring you're set up for success.
"Who will I be reporting to, and how often do I meet with them?" If the company doesn't have a clear answer for who your manager is, it's a red flag that you won't have a designated person to help you find your footing and navigate starting your first engineering job. If you won't be meeting with your manager on a regular basis, you may not receive the guidance and advice you'll need to advance your career.
"Do engineers have the opportunity to pair program?" During pair programming, two engineers code on one machine. Pair programming helps engineers share knowledge, develop group ownership of the codebase, focus, build shared context, and reflect on their work. If a company's engineers don't pair program regularly, you may be working solo often and won't have the opportunity to collaborate on writing code as much as you might during pair programming.
"Will I be working with experienced engineers or mostly other bootcamp grads and junior engineers?" One of the benefits of working in an engineering team is that you get to learn from others who have more experience. More senior engineers will be able to show you the ropes, help debug, and recommend best practices. If you'll mostly be working with other early-career engineers, you might not have the benefit of learning from more experienced engineers.

If you're looking for how to apply these lessons to your job search, you should talk to a mentor. Mentorship platforms like Merit Merit can connect you to experienced engineers who can help you practice interviewing, give advice on job hunting, and provide feedback on your work. Sign up today to schedule a session with a mentor!

How to Get Honest Answers During an Interview

Kirk Fernandes — Wed, 12 Jan 2022 20:24:25 +0000

Interviewing is tough. The process can be exhausting: hours-long on sites, take-home assignments, sending follow-ups and thank-you notes. While interviewing, it can feel like a one-way street — the company is evaluating you and determining if you’re the right fit for them. But the reverse is also true. You’re interviewing the company to learn if the role and organization match your career goals, values, and ideal work environment.

One of the best ways to learn if working at the company will be a positive experience is by asking questions during the interview process. This is your chance to learn what the company’s culture and environment are actually like and what your day-to-day will be. As Carrie Mah, Senior Product Designer at Clearco, explains, “At the interview, the company is trying to be on their best behavior, so if there’s anything you feel weird about or need clarifications on, this is your opportunity to raise any of your concerns.” Sometimes, though, getting an honest or candid answer is difficult. Employees want to cast their company in a positive light, just as you’re trying to present your best self, so you may receive vague or canned answers.

Getting to that honest, real answer — so that you can make an informed decision about whether or not to join a company — isn’t always easy. If you’re earlier in your career and/or from an underrepresented group, you might feel hesitant to ask a question or follow up for specifics. We spoke to both interviewers and interviewees about the best way to approach this challenge.

Preparation

A first step to getting honest answers is knowing what you want to ask. This will depend largely on your personal experiences, career goals, and working style. Some topics you might want to know more about are:

Career growth: Will I be able to move into the next phase of my career, or will I be focused on improving at my current seniority level? Will I receive one-on-one mentorship, or will I need to do a lot of self-directed learning? Will the company invest in my development, or will I need to grow my skill set outside of work? There’s no right answer — ask yourself what your goals are for your next job.
Company culture: Although a vague and loaded term, you might want to know if ideas are encouraged from bottom-up — or instead if mandates are driven top-down. Maybe it’s important to you that teammates develop close working relationships or you prefer working relationships to be more transactional and impersonal.
Work-life balance:
In an era of remote work and hustle culture, you might wonder if this job will take over your life. Will I be working 80 hours a week? Will I be able to maintain side hobbies and friendships? You might be in a place where you’re willing to put in long hours for the career benefits the job will provide, or you might be focused on preserving personal time.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI): Will I be welcomed as my authentic self? If the company has a commitment to DEI, what does that look like? A DEI committee or officer? Do the employees represent a range of backgrounds?
Team process and structure: If you’re a product manager, you might care a lot about the team’s product development process. (Will I receive features to build from the executive team, or will I be able to develop my own roadmap?) If you’re a designer, you might want to know if the company has a strong design culture. (Does the company value design?) If you’re an engineer, you might want to know if engineers prioritize speed or quality. (Will I be dictated to by a PM, or do PMs and engineers work together?)

Before you interview, rank the factors that are most important to you. Write out some questions you could ask. A question is more likely to receive an honest answer if it prompts specifics. Opt for questions that start with “Could you describe a time…” or “How would you handle…” Some examples:

“Could you describe a time when your team was up against a tight deadline?”
“Could you tell me about a time when your team disagreed with leadership? How did you resolve it?”
“If a teammate was struggling on a project, how would you and your team help them?”
“How is your career ladder for my position structured? How frequently does the company perform reviews?”
“What kind of learning and development budget does the company offer to employees?”

Also, do your homework on the company. What industry are they in? How big are they? For example, companies may not have career ladders defined yet, and they may not have the resources to support learning and development budgets. Conversely, large companies may have different cultures from team to team and even manager to manager — talking to people you’ll be working with will be important.

In the interview

An interview is often 30 to 45 minutes, which often doesn’t feel like a lot of time! Depending on how the interviews are structured, you’ll probably spend the majority of the time answering questions or doing an exercise, so how do you make the best of the time that’s available when you get to ask the questions? Below are some tips and tricks.

Don’t wait until the end of the interview to ask questions that may take a while to answer, because those conversations may last 5–10 minutes on their own. If you and the interviewer run out of time, ask to follow up by email: “Hey, I didn’t get a chance to ask a question about x. Would it be okay if I sent an email to follow up?” If you’re not able to get their email address, ask the recruiter if they could forward a message to them (I usually do this by attaching a PDF to an email to the recruiter).
Ask for examples and specifics. To get detailed answers, Brennan Moore, former Head of Engineering at Cityblock Health, suggests a framework called the STAR method (situation, task, action, result). Rather than asking, “How do teams collaborate?” you can prompt, “Can you tell me about a time when two teams had to work together to achieve a goal?” If you’d like to know more about how managers interact with their employees, you might say, “Can you describe your ideal relationship with someone you manage?”
Don’t be afraid to dig deeper. If you receive a vague answer to “How do teammates give feedback to each other?” you can ask follow-up questions, like “Could you describe a time when you had to give feedback to a teammate?”
Frame your question to highlight a positive quality about you. Maybe at a previous job you had a difficult relationship with another department. You can say, “It’s really important to me to have strong cross-departmental communication. How do departments communicate cross-functionally?” If you’re worried that your remote team, spread across time zones, means you’ll always be “on,” you might say, “I’ve noticed I do my best work in the mornings, followed by a break in the afternoon before doing some more work in the evening. How would this schedule work for the rest of the team?”
Provide hypotheticals. In a remote working environment with teams operating across time zones, it can be hard to know the expectations for availability and time management. If you’re located on the east coast, you might say, “If my west coast teammate has a question at 8 pm my time, how quickly would they expect a response?”
Avoid the canned question. Angélique Bélizaire, Senior Product Designer at Eden Health, commented, “If you’re going to ask a vague question, you’re going to have to accept a vague answer where you have to read between the lines.” Asking “How would you describe the company culture?” will probably result in variations on “collaborative.” Instead, you might ask, “What’s something that exemplifies the company culture that could only happen at this company?”

Beyond the interview

You can ask more questions outside the interview. The interview is a formal channel for gaining information, but looking to other sources can provide information you weren’t able to get while interviewing with the company directly.

Reach out informally to current or former employees. Think of this as a reverse reference check. If you have connections in your network, ask for an introduction to other employees, whether they’re still working there or have moved on. Current or former employees have on-the-ground experience and can tell you more about the company informally, which means they’re more likely to be candid.
See if you can speak to someone who’s in your role now if you haven’t already. A larger company will, most likely, already have someone in your current role or would be an individual contributor on your team. Ask if you can meet with them — they’ll be able to give you a better sense of the team culture.
Read the company’s website. A company’s website can offer a wealth of information, from commitment to diversity to company values. The tone of the website (brand colors, company description, and slogans/mottos) can indicate if the company is aggressive, laid-back, oriented to men, etc. What kind of vibe would you like from your employer? Also, most companies have a leadership page — how many executives are from an underrepresented group (e.g., women, Black, Latinx)? If the company has an employees page, what’s the makeup of the team? Will you be the only person in your group at the company, and if so, are you okay with that?
Look at the company’s LinkedIn. If the company doesn’t have an employee page on their website, you can usually get this information from LinkedIn. Take a look at some employee profiles — how long do folks usually tend to work there? If they’ve been with the company a while, have they been promoted? Not everyone keeps their LinkedIn profile completely up-to-date, but they can still provide signals.
Read reviews but take them with a grain of salt.
Glassdoor is notorious for only including really positive and really negative reviews with nothing in the middle, but reading between the lines or spotting patterns can raise red flags. Do multiple reviews mention a toxic environment, like a bro culture, or working long hours? Do most people approve or disapprove of the CEO?

There’s no perfect job

If you receive an offer, congrats! You now have a decision to make: whether to take the job. Remember that no matter the research you do and the questions you ask, there will still be surprises at your new job.

As Jim Lindstrom, VP of Product & Engineering at Augintel, says, “The number of ways a job can disappoint you are infinite,” so defining what’s important to you going into the interview is crucial.

The ideal working environment and the perfect role doesn’t exist. However, asking questions about the aspects that matter most to you will give you the best chance of finding the right fit for you, but keep in mind that “fit” is subjective: an ideal work-life balance or manager-managee relationship is personal to each individual.

Get help and practice

If you’re not sure how to ask these questions or get a candid answer, asking for advice is always helpful. Try practicing with a mentor, like those on Merit, who can help you workshop your questions and practice asking them.

Why mentorship?

Kirk Fernandes — Tue, 11 Jan 2022 20:44:55 +0000

Growing your career in tech is hard, but it’s a lot more manageable when you have people to talk to about problems and get advice. There is where mentors come in. A mentor can be anyone who has some experience and wants to talk to you.

But often finding a mentor and getting the most out of mentorship is harder than it needs to be. After facilitating thousands of hours of mentorship, Merit has collected some tips and tricks for getting the most out of mentorship.

What is mentorship?

Mentorship is a way to grow your career and a more meaningful way to network in the industry.

But “mentorship” is also a loaded term. It could mean anything from asking for help in one difficult situation to building a long-term relationship where the mentor coaches and leads the mentee. The type of relationship or structure is dependent on what you want to get out of it: a session to get feedback, a long-term mentor over a period of months, or to chat every week or month.

How to pick a mentor?

Talk to many people; sometimes you won’t know who will be helpful until you talk to them. It takes multiple perspectives and people to grow your career.
Having multiple mentors also takes the pressure off anyone single person to be responsible for your progress or momentum.
Be flexible on the role — sometimes people outside your role and discipline can still have great advice.

Where to find mentors?

If you already have an established network:

Current or former coworkers: Especially if they are someone more senior whom you admire.
School or alumni groups: People who’ve graduated or even peers can make good mentors.
Community groups: There are lots of community groups that are based around roles, location, or identities (e.g., Out in Tech, Ladies Get Paid, Black Girls Code) that have lots of senior people to talk to.

If you are looking to expand your network, here are some places to explore:

LinkedIn: This is the largest network but the hardest to navigate and connect with. The odds of someone responding to your cold DMs are low, but everyone has a LinkedIn profile.
Twitter: There is tech twitter. Tech Twitter is smaller than LinkedIn, but you can still get a sense of someone’s thinking and personality. Like on LinkedIn, you can still DM folks.
Here there’s a higher chance of them responding, but the odds are still low.
Mentorship platforms: On mentorship platforms, mentors have profiles, topics they’re happy to discuss with you, and a schedule of their availability. These platforms have fewer people than other social networks, but the folks on these platforms are specifically there to mentor so you’re much more likely to hear back after reaching out.

How do I approach mentorship sessions?

Be specific: With the time (e.g., 30 minutes) and the topic (i.e., “I would love some advice on how to ask my boss for a promotion to Senior PM”). This allows the other person to prepare but also approach the session with ideas before it starts.
Share context: When asking for advice on a problem or situation, provide background on the issue and what you’ve tried as well as the context of your team and company. All this information helps the mentor adjust and tune their advice.
Respect people’s time: Once you commit to a date and time, send any relevant materials in advance and be sure to arrive and end on time.
Listen: This is the most important part! People want to help people who listen to advice and suggestions. Try to soak in as much as possible. Ask follow-up and clarifying questions.
Say thanks and follow up: This is a very common thing that most people don’t do. First, just send a note to say thank you. Follow up in a week or month after you’ve tried the things your mentor suggested. It doesn’t have to always be good news or major things but just a simple note is enough to help close the loop.

How to maintain mentorship longer term?

Over a long period of time, we are all co-workers. Mentorship never truly ends; it just transforms. Sometimes you talk to someone once or twice, or regularly for a few months, or once in a while over many years. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to mentorship. A good way to think about it is to give more than you take and to approach each interaction with empathy and openness.

Offer to help: Just because you are a junior doesn’t mean you can’t help. Often times more senior folks want to learn from you, your process, your insights, and your network.
Mentorship and recruiting overlap: Hiring managers and tech workers are getting more hip to taking a longer view on these kinds of relationships. Your mentees or mentors now could be someone you work for or works for you later. The line between recruiting and mentorship is being blurred.

If you are looking for a mentor in product, design, or engineering. Merit has hundreds of mentors that are available to talk to.

How to build relationships without an office

Randy Brown — Tue, 11 Jan 2022 16:13:12 +0000

Remote work has been a lifeline for many folks: more time with family or friends, no commute, wearing sweatpants during important meetings. But building relationships with your coworkers at a new job can be difficult through a screen. For folks who have a few years of experience, making connections remotely can be tricky but not unmanageable; for those who are in their first or second job, it can feel impossible.

Your coworkers, even though you may not see them in person often (or ever), are the people you spend most of your waking life with. They're your current and future professional network. They're people with whom you need to collaborate and negotiate, and that's much easier if you've developed a working relationship. But how do you go about doing that when all your interactions are through a screen?

Many of the tactics for building a working relationship remotely are the same as building a working relationship in person, but they require more intention. Instead of grabbing lunch or coffee to get to know someone, you may have to reach out directly over Slack (or whatever messaging system your company uses) to have a video meeting. Rather than using body language in meetings to gauge folks' reactions, you may have to ask explicitly. You probably won't bump into someone outside your department/team just by chance, so meeting people outside your immediate teammates will take more time, effort, and yes, intention.

Why build working relationships?

Cultivating working relationships has a variety of benefits, and as you approach meeting colleagues and getting to know them, it's helpful to keep a few goals top of mind.

Developing rapport: Working with someone is easier when you're on friendly terms. If you've already had a few conversations with someone, sending a Slack message asking for help may be received more warmly.
Additionally, proactively reaching out gives you an opportunity to learn more about how your colleague likes to work. For example, some people prefer to collaborate out loud in meetings, whereas others prefer to work on written documentation. Some people may really enjoy diving into a new problem right away, whereas others might want time to sit with and process new information before sharing their ideas.
Understanding individual and team motivations: Sometimes at work, your coworkers' behavior can seem a little mysterious. Why was this person so frustrated in that meeting? Why are they pushing so hard for their team to do this apparently random thing? More often than not, deciphering your coworkers' behavior relies on knowing the person's or their team's motivations. Is this person a product manager who is stretched really thin and is trying to gain stakeholder alignment as soon as possible so their team can build this new feature? Maybe a team is understaffed and is pushing for more resources, so everyone is feeling spread thin. Getting to know your coworkers and their teams makes it more likely you'll understand the why behind their actions.
Cultivating social and political capital: "Social capital" and "political capital" are fuzzy terms that, in general, refer to having a good rapport with teammates, so they're more likely to help out if you ask (social capital) and have built up a bank of favors and alliances with other teams (political capital). These types of capital come in handy when you need someone to agree to pitch in on a big project or ask for their endorsement of your idea. Creating this capital is only possible when you connect with and get to know your coworkers.
Making connections for the future: Your professional network is often comprised of current and former coworkers. Proactively fostering a working relationship with someone means that years down the road, you might be able to reach out for a referral to a job or ask for advice.

But...how?

You can use a variety of methods to build working relationships. The most straightforward way is to ask to have a one-on-one (1-1) meeting. Asking is easiest over Slack. After you've started at your new job, you can send a direct message that may be something like:

"Hi [coworker's name]! My name is [your name], and I just started at [company] as [your role] on [date]. I'd love to meet to learn more about you and get to know more about your work as [their role]. Could I set up a meeting with you sometime in the next week?"

During the 1-1, ask about what they do in their job, how long they've been at the company, and what they're currently working on. And it doesn't just have to be about work! One of the first steps to developing any kind of rapport is finding common ground. Where do they live? Do they like it? Do they have pets? If the person is a direct teammate, you might want to ask about their preferred working style and what you can do to best help them in their work.

You don't have to rely just on 1-1s. People typically trickle into meetings, so if you and someone else are on a video call before everyone else joins, this is a great time for informal conversations—ask about weekend plans, general "how's it going," etc.

If you do work near some of your coworkers and feel comfortable doing so, you might want to meet up! Shared experiences make for great bonding, and even already strong remote relationships can become even stronger after in-person interactions.

Most importantly, remember to keep the conversation going. A relationship doesn't come from a one-and-done meeting—continue to reach out over Slack and every once in a while grab "remote coffee" (not as fun as in-person coffee, but still a good chance to chat). For any meetings that you lead or have a role in conducting, see if you can allocate 5 minutes on the meeting agenda just for banter and catching up.

Meeting Etiquette Crash Course

If you're new(ish) to scheduling and holding meetings, follow these rules of thumb:

Ask first and schedule in advance: People usually appreciate the courtesy of a request to meet before you send one directly to them. It sets the context and also gives them the chance to say, "Yes, that would be great, but could we do it next week?" If someone agrees to meet, feel free to suggest some times that work for both of you (see below), which spares the other person from checking both there and your schedules.
Come with a short agenda but be flexible!: It's best to come with a few topics you'd like to cover in a meeting, but since your focus is on getting to know someone, don't worry too much about letting the topic wander. You may uncover new insights or information about your coworker that you might not have learned otherwise!
Respect working hours and time zones: Teams now extend across North America (and in some cases, the globe). Keep in mind someone's local time zone. If you're in NYC and your coworker is in San Francisco, they may not love it if you send a meeting for 10 am your time (7 am their time). People may also note their working hours on their calendar or block off times that they're unavailable—avoid booking over those times.
Don't book in the middle of uninterrupted time: Many people need uninterrupted time to get into the "flow" of their work and focus. If you see someone has three consecutive unbooked hours, don't book right in the middle! Context switching from solo work to a meeting back to solo work can be frustrating and time-consuming.

Ask for help

Learning how to connect with teammates might still feel daunting. Maybe your company isn't big on having 1-1 meetings or people don't respond to your Slack messages.

Perhaps, after 6 months, your company and your teammates still feel like total strangers. In this case, don't be afraid to ask for help elsewhere in your network.

And if you're having trouble getting started, connecting with a mentor on Merit is a great way to quickly and easily schedule some time where you can ask for advice and get ideas.

10 tips on quitting your job

Kirk Fernandes — Fri, 07 Jan 2022 21:33:38 +0000

Quitting your job can lead to a mix of emotions. You can be happy to be moving on to a new company, role, or place but sad to leave the work, company, and people you’ve spent your waking hours with. There is no single right way to “quit,” but there are some guidelines and best practices I’ve seen across the industry.

This article isn’t intended for using an offer or the threat to quit as a negotiation tactic. While that may work in certain situations, the advice below is geared to when you’ve signed another offer and need to know what to do next to leave your current job. You know you want to leave but you want to leave on good terms with your co-workers and your company.

Your company may or may not have a process for quitting (often called “off-boarding”). Assuming your company has an off-boarding process, follow those instructions. Usually, it will involve giving back equipment, accounts being turned off, and ending payroll and benefits.

This article is less about those to-dos but more about what you should do as an employee to get the most out of a company before you leave. As a founder, manager, and product manager I’ve personally quit many jobs, had people quit on me, and seen numerous co-workers quit.

I’ve reflected on what are the ten most beneficial things you can do for your career (and your co-workers) before you leave your job.

Write down a short “reason” why

Write why you are leaving, and make it short and clear. This reason doesn’t have to be brutally honest, and you can find a way to frame the reason in a positive light. This is the “party line” for your departure — this reason will be repeated by your manager to other managers and leaders, and you’ll be providing this reason to everyone whom you tell you’re leaving.

“I am leaving Facebook. I accepted an offer as Head of Marketing at TikTok. I’ve always wanted to work in social media, and it’s a dream company of mine. I really enjoyed the work and people here, but I think it’s the best next step for my career.”

Before deciding your last day, check your benefits and compensation

When picking your day, be sure to review your benefits and compensation to make sure you are getting the most out of your company before you leave:

Equity and bonuses: You should check your employment contract for when your equity and bonuses get paid out. You don’t want to quit a day before you get another 25% of your equity or a quarterly bonus.
Vacation days: Look at your remaining unused vacation days. What happens to unused vacation days when you quit? Do they get cashed out, or do you have to use them before you quit?
Health insurance: When will your health insurance end? For most health care plans, quitting on the first day of the month ensures you get your benefits for the whole month.
Retirement benefits: Do your 401(k) or any other retirement plans carry over? — Fitness or learning and development benefits: Do you have any unused benefits you can use before you leave?

Your last day should be 2–4 weeks from when you tell your boss. Anything less than two weeks and it might be hard to properly transition all your work and figure out the logistics. Anything more than four weeks you enter a bit of a lame-duck period: you can still do work, but assigning you new work doesn’t make much sense. In general, have a specific date you want to be your last date and get your manager to commit to that.

Tell your boss first, once you’ve signed your contract

They should be the first to know, and you should try to tell them in a regularly scheduled 1:1. If you can’t, then schedule a one-off meeting to tell them. It’s good practice to write out (and practice) what you are going to say. Be clear and firm — that you are quitting, you took another job, and you want your last day to be on a specific date.

If you’re having trouble figuring out how to word it, talk to a mentor or use a mentorship platform like Merit to talk with people who’ve done it before.
You need to give them space to process the information. Sometimes they have suspected this in advance; other times they don’t see it coming. This is a good time (if you feel like it) to thank them for being your manager and share that you enjoyed working with them.

In general, you should only communicate once you have officially signed for your next job and have that start date locked in. Until you are officially signed, you may or may not be employed by the next company. You don’t want to tell your company you are quitting and then come back with no job or have to stay. Once you tell them your last day, be prepared to leave that day.

Create a messaging plan with your manager

This is going to be dependent on the size and culture of the company. The most important thing is to get you and the manager on the same page, so you can own the communication together. Create a list of people or groups to tell, who is going to tell them, what format, and when:

Person: Jenny
Messenger: Manager
Format: 1:1
Date: Jan 2nd
Status: Not Done

Tell the people you work with the most 1:1. Remember, once you tell one person, three people know. The best move is to batch everyone on the same day for the folks you are most concerned about.

1:1 is ideal, but if you can’t meet with everyone, a DM or email works too. Just try to message your core people before the larger team or company messaging. Let your manager communicate in large meetings or settings.

Create a transition plan with your manager

This is the most important thing to align on and work through before your last day. This is important because it will people’s last impression of you and it is also an opportunity to give people an increased scope of responsibility. So use this as an opportunity to help other people’s careers.

You want to create a list that tracks all your current work and who and when it will be handed off to:

Responsibility: Design Team Meeting
Owner: Jennifer Liu
Notes: Link to agenda
Target Date: Jan 4th
Status: Not Started

You want a single document that references all your notes and hand-off documentation. For each item, you want to have an owner and do a handoff 1:1. As you make progress through this document, update your manager on the relevant stakeholders. Your goal is to transition everything before your last day.

Save your performance reviews

You’ll want to keep your manager and peer feedback after you leave this company. Once you leave, you’ll forget this information, and I find it useful when you interview later or want to pull on previous experiences. You might want to scrub anything that’s too confidential or related to intellectual property but usually documented performance reviews are mostly about you.

Prepare for your exit interview

Be honest but not petty. Healthy companies will analyze this data, but most companies will not. Remember that you may work with any of these people again, so give feedback with that in mind. In general, you want to communicate any meaningful feedback to your manager or HR before this, but sometimes exit interviews are your last venue for this feedback.

Write your goodbye note

This is a personal one. But focus on the time spent and be positive. It’s always good to say thank you to specific people, especially your managers and direct reports. Often I forward this to your personal email so folks can respond to it even after you leave. If you feel comfortable include your personal email or contact information, so folks can contact you after you lose access to your work emails.

Add your co-workers on LinkedIn

Do a final pass before you quit. Sometimes getting the personal emails of the folks you really like are worth it too. You never know when you are going to work with them again.

Leave a review on Glassdoor

This is a bit debated. I think it’s good practice to leave an honest but not traceable review on Glassdoor. Again this shouldn’t be info you haven’t communicated to managers or HR but it should be honest. Try to do it in a way where it’s hard to trace. Be loose with your title/dates.

Quitting is scary, but you can take advantage of leaving to make the transition as smooth as possible along with getting the most out of your job before you quit. If you want more advice on quitting your job, talk to a mentor on Merit. It’s much easier to feel confident when you’ve had some practice. Book a mentor here.

I’m an engineer. What do product managers do?

Randy Brown — Fri, 07 Jan 2022 18:50:42 +0000

At the heart of building a product is the relationship between product managers and engineers. Building a strong, collaborative relationship between the two groups is critical for the success of any software team.

But often it's not really clear who's supposed to do what and how the two pieces fit together. What's supposed to be a harmonious collaboration can turn into a complicated negotiation of roles and responsibilities. If you're just starting out as an engineer, you may be asking yourself, "What does a product manager do? What can I expect when working with a product manager?"

What do product managers actually do?

In its most basic definition, product managers are responsible for creating solutions that meet a business goal. That goal might be increasing the number of users using a product, maximizing revenue, or increasing engagement.

Whatever the problem is, the product manager needs to come up with an answer that meets the needs of the business and can be delivered by the team. They are then responsible for driving the creation and success of their product.

In reality, that responsibility ends up looking like a whole slew of tasks. Product managers typically end up being responsible for

researching and analyzing the market and competitors
prioritizing, scoping, and framing products and projects
deeply understanding how all functions of the business work
conducting user research, usually with a designer or UX researcher
working with engineers and designers to deliver a solution that is viable for the business, enjoyable for users, and technically feasible
communicating with stakeholders and cross-functional teams
project and delivery management

In their first job on a software team, engineers don't need to know everything that a product manager does. That comes with time, as you gain experience working on a team.

Where does engineering come in?

Product managers develop ideas about how a solution might meet their business goal or problem. The tough reality of product management is that product managers by design can't deliver the solutions themselves, but they are very much responsible for what is delivered. A product manager can't require anyone to do anything, but the product manager is usually the person who has to answer the stakeholders if something goes wrong.

Product managers need their teams to help make their vision a reality.

Engineers are responsible for finding a way to implement a product in a technically feasible way. You'll often hear this as product management is responsible for the "what," while engineering and design is responsible for the "how."

Let's say a product manager has determined that the best way to maximize revenue for an e-commerce product is to retool the checkout flow, but their vision for those changes would be difficult to build, requiring lots of front-end and back-end changes. The engineer works with the product manager to scope down the proposal to a solution that can actually be built within a reasonable timeframe. That back-and-forth can often be tricky, but it usually leads to better results, because engineers are often the source of incredible product ideas!

What does this relationship look like in practice?

Most teams are usually made up of a product manager, a designer (depending on the product), a technical lead, and engineers. Those working in an agile framework usually have similar meetings and rituals like:

stand-ups
retros
product demos
backlog grooming and prioritization
customer interviews and usability sessions

Product managers have to perform all the responsibilities mentioned above as well as leading some of these meetings. But there are no hard and fast rules for who leads which meeting.

Each team finds its own breakdown. In some teams, the engineers might run stand-ups and demos, while in other companies, the product managers lead those meetings. Some companies might put ticket writing in the hands of engineers, while other companies prefer that product managers lead ticket creation and refinement. It really depends! What's important is that it works for your team.

How do I get started working with a product manager for the first time?

For your first day, product managers will probably appreciate your knowing how many tasks and responsibilities their job entails. They have to make dozens of decisions a day about backlog prioritization, bug triage, and product design. They're then accountable for the consequences of those decisions and are usually juggling multiple competing priorities every day. They also often end up spending a lot of time rushing from meeting to meeting.

Approaching your new product manager as a collaborator (albeit one who may be very stretched thin) and teammate is a great way to start a working relationship with them.

And if you know the basics of the key roles on software teams and how agile teams usually conduct meetings, you'll be ahead of the curve.

Curious about working with PMs?

Talk to a mentor on Merit! You can talk to product managers about working in cross-functional teams and their first year working in product management.