You don’t have to be a CTO or director to be a leader at a tech company.
Though Michele Larson is the director of engineering at GumGum, she believes that individual contributors still have a chance to showcase their leadership skills.
“[B]eing a leader does not necessarily mean you need to take the management path,” Larson said. “As an individual contributor, there are still plenty of ways to become a leader by building consensus among your team and company. Once you have a better understanding of what impact you want to have, you can work toward that goal in your current role.”
Yet, with greater power comes greater responsibility. With a promotion to director of engineering, Larson was surprised at how much impact she was able to make on her team, a sentiment also shared by First Resonance Data Engineer Lead Connor Francis.
“The technical growth and enjoyment that leadership has brought me [has surprised me],” Francis said. “It has been an absolute pleasure to see my team's growth as well as my own.”
In addition to providing advice to climbing the engineering career ladder, Larson and First Resonance Data Engineer Lead Connor Francis shared with Built In LA the lessons they’ve learned along the way and what new skills they’ve acquired in leadership roles.
What they do: First Resonance’s hardware manufacturing platform is designed to enable engineers and technicians to improve speed, collaboration and visibility.
Give us a brief idea of your career trajectory at First Resonance.
I joined the First Resonance team as the fifth member, and the first full-time, back-end engineer. My official title is “data engineer/scientist,” but to analyze data we first had to build the platform to collect it. Over the last two years, I’ve done just that — I built our products API and data structure. Along the way, I accumulated knowledge of and familiarity with many disciplines related to our product such as DevOps, API design, networking, architecture and manufacturing. This breadth of knowledge and existing intimacy with the product was how I got promoted to a leadership role. It is difficult to point out specific things that brought me to this role. It was a lot of reading, side projects in my own time to keep learning, and a real sincere interest in the product we are building and the software tools we are using to build it.
What surprised you most about your new leadership role?
The technical growth and enjoyment that leadership has brought me. At First Resonance one of our core values is that “we are all owners.” I have always embraced this aphorism, although it had a surprising and subtle shift in meaning when I took on a leadership role. It started slowly as the other engineers ramped up to familiarity with the codebase; they reflected my styling to not alter the product’s coherence and fluidity. But as we became comfortable and friendly with one another, they began to make improvements and set in motion this search function wherein each of us picked up the best habits from the others to replace old habits until we reached a sort of pythonic local optimum for our team. Each of us significantly improved the process. It has been an absolute pleasure to see my team’s growth as well as my own, truly moving from the mentality of “I am an owner” to “we are all owners.”
This breadth of knowledge and existing intimacy with the product was how I got promoted to a leadership role.”
What advice do you have for engineers looking to move into a leadership role?
Advice is a difficult thing to give. Most of what has worked for me is not generalizable into a useful bundle of words. With that caveat in mind, here is my best shot:
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In general, do not proffer unsolicited advice. You will sound condescending. If you have constructive criticism, frame it as such and be concise.
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Batch and cache everything you can, both in software and in leadership. Set aside time to review PRs, respond to emails, and hold office hours for your team to have open discussions. Structure these things in batches so you can be more efficient and not be constantly context switching. If an engineer on your team is working within a certain domain, that code will be primed in their memory. Try and align the rest of their work to be within the same domain.
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Be the pull request you want to see in the world.
What they do: GumGum specializes in online advertising tech that doesn’t require HTTP cookies. It uses computer vision and NLP tech to provide users with relevant ads based on the content they view.
Give us a brief idea of your career trajectory at GumGum.
I’ve been at GumGum for six years, beginning as a software engineer. After a year, my manager decided he wanted to go back to being an individual contributor and asked if I was interested in becoming a manager. I give credit to this manager for really believing in me and pushing me out of my comfort zone and helping me to learn to trust in my ability. Before working in engineering, I had previous experience working in an unrelated industry, so I had learned a lot of non-engineering and leadership skills (including communication, writing, and organization) that helped me to quickly ramp up as a manager. At GumGum, I started managing two people, and have since grown my team and my responsibilities.
Being a leader does not necessarily mean you need to take the management path.”
What surprised you most about your new leadership role?
As soon as I became a manager, I was given a lot of flexibility to explore the impact I wanted to have on my team. At first, I was surprised at this freedom and how much of a real impact I could have. I think that sometimes in individual contributor roles you can feel limited in what changes you can affect, so the immensity of the possibilities and what I should focus on was overwhelming. I started out small, documenting some of our processes and focusing on streamlining our team’s workflow, and was happy to find that I still could have job satisfaction from helping my team but in a different way than what I was used to. I also realized what a direct influence I had in my team’s work experience and helping them develop in their career and as a person. This aspect of managing has been really fulfilling as I’ve seen people I manage really grow and excel in their roles.
What advice do you have for engineers looking to move into a leadership role?
First, I would ask yourself what leadership looks like to you and where and how you see yourself leading. Leadership can take many forms. Being a leader does not necessarily mean you need to take the management path. As an individual contributor, there are still plenty of ways to become a leader by building consensus among your team and company. Once you have a better understanding of what impact you want to have, you can work toward that goal in your current role. Some examples include mentoring teammates, answering questions, identifying and suggesting team improvements, and improving team processes. Another great skill for leadership is being decisive. You can develop this skill by identifying any pain points or blockers within your team or project, providing and explaining options to your team, and making a final decision on how to move forward.
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