Zype | Full Time | SDE 3 | India (Bangalore/Mumbai) | ONSITE
Zype is a personal loan app for millennials in India. We are growing fast and moving into a multi product setup. Looking for SDE 3s (both backend and frontend) to help us in this journey.
What you have mentioned are indeed the responsibilities of the "Head of Engineering" role.
Just when I learned how to build high quality, secure, and performant software I was pushed into the role of management. It took me some time to figure out where to draw the line between being an IC and being a manager. But when I realised that the success in the role dependent on the success of my team, I started investing my time in developing and growing the team to create a mindset of building high quality, secure, and performant software.
>> The whole company is doing so much more than I could do as an individual
This realisation is important that as a company grows, you will not be able to do all the things by yourself. You would need reliable, high agency people to take care of things exactly the way you would have. Train them. Build them into next generation leaders. Slowly start delegating more responsibility. Allow them to reach their best potential. These are soft skills and building soft skills takes decades, but they are worth investing time in. Focus on taking high quality decisions and help make sure they are getting delivered while meeting stakeholder expectations.
If you start enjoying the above aspects, you'll feel less burned out. You may not be in a position to build software, but you'll be in a position to build high performing teams and be an invaluable asset to the company.
If you still think IC work interests you more, you should ask your management to move back into the IC role and help them figure out the right person who can take up the people management, process improvement job.
1. Solve your own problem first: As you rightly mentioned, solving your own problem first is helpful. If there are millions like you who are facing the same problem and are willing to pay for your solution, you have a business. If it is a recurring problem, you have a bumper business.
2. Observe market trends: Changes in purchasing power, changes in expectations of needs and wants, changes in human behavior over time, geo-political events, climate change, natural and artificial calamities, etc usually create new markets. For example, having a smartphone was more of a "want" than a "need" a decade ago. But today it has become a necessity.
3. New technology on the block: Big businesses drive new technologies and the new technologies then drive small businesses. This has always been the case. We saw it in the mobile revolution how Apple and Google came up with the AppStore and the PlayStore respectively and we are witnessing it today in the LLM models. These marketplaces allowed several unicorn "app" businesses to flourish. In fact, just adding a GPS tracker in smartphones, ended up creating more value in the business world than the App Store and the PlayStore themselves.
4. Regulatory, Statutory, or Govt policy changes: A lot of times these changes create unexpected new markets. For example, think about the EU mandating companies to adhere to GDPR guidelines in 2018. It must have suddenly created openings for hundreds of thousands of data privacy officers. Any company that spent time learning the guidelines and providing training, coaching, and certifications would build a big business. The same goes for companies providing consultancy on implementation gaps, verification of controls, etc.
5. Taking bets on smaller markets: Smaller markets are usually not on the radar of the tech giants, but if you have a conviction that the market is going to grow rapidly, it is totally possible to build a big business in it. One such example is Uber. As per their first investment raise pitch deck in 2008, the predicted TAM for app-driven cab-hailing business was $4.2B[1]. Today Uber itself is a $100B+ giant along with several other players operating in the market.
This is a framework I use. If you think there are more such ways to identify business opportunities, please add them to the list. I hope you find this useful.
> So, if you're tired of keeping up with the latest hot thing in tech, a management role can provide a well-deserved relief. Do keep an eye on what's happening on the tech side of things, but there's no urgency, and no need to get real deep.
This is such a poor advice. In any company that has a dozens customers, your team is likely to face technical problems. When your team faces a problem and you are unable to solve it, your team will notice that and they will stop looking up to you. In fact, any engineer who solves the problem will be the hero everyone admires. The approach mentioned by the author makes you a good "boss", but not necessarily a good "manager" or "supervisor" or "leader".
> Life of an engineer is relatively relaxed. If you don't have anything urgent, you can go lay on the grass for half a day, thinking about the future of your project or something. You can miss a few meetings on short notice, no questions asked.
If you want to build a decent team, you really have to relax your grip on the tech part.
You don't fix every problem yourself, but have someone who can fix it available. Otherwise, people don't grow, and you can't take a vacation. You totally need a general (middle / senior level) understanding of technology, but having a separate person with strong technical chops is key.
> In which company does this happen, I wonder!
As a staff engineer on a design system for a top 50 website, roughly half my job was detailing a tech roadmap and identifying what can break across the codebase, something you can do perfectly well on grass.
> When your team faces a problem and you are unable to solve it, your team will notice that and they will stop looking up to you. In fact, any engineer who solves the problem will be the hero everyone admires.
This is quite revealing. Being a hero, or being looked up to, might be some people's goals. But definitely not everyone's.
You can read books by master story tellers too. Those will never be boring and will be full with twisted facts and interesting relationships. You can start with Crime thrillers, Murder mysteries.
Adding to the above list:
Jeffery Archer and Dan Brown present some very interesting books in the form of "Kane and Abel" and "Angels and Demons".
Another good book that you might find interesting is "Flatland - a romance of many dimensions" by Edwin Abbott.
