People Development

This is the long game. Everything in the previous five chapters helps you survive the first 90 days. This chapter is what separates managers who are still effective two years in from the ones who burn out or plateau.

People development is also where most new EMs fall shortest — not because they don't care, but because it's the easiest thing to deprioritize when things get busy. The 1:1 gets cancelled. The feedback conversation gets pushed. The quarterly goals conversation never happens because the quarter already started. Before you know it, it's performance review season and you're scrambling to remember what your reports even worked on.

Why It Compounds

The managers who invest consistently in their team's development get compounding returns. Engineers who feel seen and coached grow faster, take on more, and become more independent — which frees you up to work on higher-leverage things. Engineers who feel ignored or under-managed quietly disengage, then leave, and you spend months backfilling.

The investment is small. A well-run 1:1 is 30 minutes. Timely feedback takes 5 minutes. Quarterly goals take an hour. The ROI is enormous — it's just slow enough that it's easy to skip.

What This Chapter Covers

Six lessons:

• 1:1s — what they are, what they aren't, and how to make them worth showing up for
• Soliciting and Capturing Feedback — how to collect meaningful signal on your team and yourself
• Identifying Patterns and Layered Feedback — reading what your team is telling you and responding well
• Quarterly Goals — goal-setting that actually influences behavior
• End of Year Reviews — how to write reviews that are fair, useful, and defensible
• Difficult Conversations — the conversations you keep postponing and why that always makes things worse

By the end of this chapter you'll have a clear, repeatable system for developing your team — one that doesn't require heroic effort to sustain.