Lessons from a layoff
As some readers might have come to see in past weeks, several tech companies performed rounds of layoffs. VTEX, an eCommerce Brazilian company was one of those and I found myself on the market looking for a new position.
Do not take it personally but have a step back and think
Once the initial shock disappeared I quickly grabbed a sheet of paper and started to lay down the last two years I spent as Engineering Manager with its main events, deliveries, team updates, secondary and parallel projects, leadership changes, and so on. I created a rough sketch and it brought several insights that I'm sure will be helpful in my upcoming position.
Align, align, align with leadership
This is the most important lesson I extracted. Over two years, I went through four different Directors of Engineering and two Senior EMs as direct reports. Meaning that my team’s global objective changed without me realizing it. Lesson: if you get a new direct report/leader, make it crystal clear what you are planning, doing, and delivering with them even if it seems obvious. If yes, then you’re good to go. If not, you avoided some potential big trouble further down the road.Do not wait until the end of a quarter to switch team members’ focus(es)
I thought it was better to close some secondary team projects before updating the focus of one of my engineers to match the main project to be delivered. If secondary tasks or projects are not critical, then set them aside if you are under a certain pressure to deliver a key project. Use the task force at your availability as soon as possible.Manage your stakeholders from the start
I was assigned with the creation of a Design System and failed to see that many stakeholders were in the dark early on as to how the migration should be applied. If your project impacts or will impact other teams, make sure they are aware of this future step. Have a clear public roadmap with updated status.Warn leadership of delays
One of my key projects was ready to be shipped for several months but an important element outside of the engineering scope was blocking its publication. At the time, doing all that I was doing on a daily basis as EM, I did not feel the need to communicate this clearly to leadership. Wrong again, they might have given me insights on how to proceed or even stepped in to speed up the process. This links directly to the first item of this list, in case of doubt, yell!Show your work
Once you're out of the company there is no taking back documents you created. This makes sense in many cases but also can be a loss. I had taken many notes through dozens of Drive docs and Notion pages around Engineering Management and this became unavailable to me. So if you create, organize, or write something you care about, store this aside, on a Medium account, your Drive, or even a blog. I had to be struck by a layoff to realize I could publish something I care about. Who knows where it might take you and how it might impact others.