GitLab Learning & Development, 20 Aug 2021

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From YouTube: Career Conversations with your Team Members with Darva Satcher

Description

In this interview, Jacie Bandur on the Learning & Development Team interviews Darva Satcher, Senior Manager, Engineering - Create to learn more about having career conversations with her team members.

A

Hi, I'm jc bander on the learning and development team here at gitlab and I'm joined by darvis, satcher senior manager, engineering and today we're going to be talking about career development as a manager. So darva, could you start off by telling us how you approach career development conversations with your team members.

B

Sure jc thanks well for me, career development is actually one of the most important aspects of my job and that is to nurture the careers and the development of team members. I meet with engineering managers, they report directly to me, and I also have skip levels with engineers. The ics and I have consistent messages that I give to all of them, and I would first start off by saying um I see career development synonymous with growth.

B

uh You have some team members who are not interested in promotion or some team members who just want to learn a new skill or some team members who maybe are weak in certain areas and they want to grow in those areas. So I look at career development as this holistic thing. So the first thing that I do is I define what career development is, just as I just did to the direct report. I find that it's inter it's important to like, say exactly what career development looks like, so that we're on the same page.

B

So that's the first thing I did and, as I said before, it could be changing roles. Let's say you're an ic in engineering and you want to go into security. It could be. I want a promotion in the next month. uh It could be. I want to become a domain expert in go or some other language or something else it could be. I want to strengthen my transparency, value or my div value, so it there's so many things, so we want to kind of broaden people's scope of what they think of as career development.

B

So that's the first thing, um I'm a firm believer in continuous learning, just like ci cd cl right, yeah. Okay, um I don't think I've been in this business for a while and it's changed so much and one one thing: I've learned. Is you don't want your code to stay still right? You, you wouldn't use libraries from 1992., you don't use practices from 1992 either. So I guess I'm dating myself. Let's say 2011., uh but you you want to stay current. You want to stay relevant and you want to always keep learning.

B

So I would also say own your career development. Don't let it just happen.

B

You are the only one who is with you during the entire time, no matter what job you have, no matter what team you're working on you're, the one constant so don't rely on your manager, your mentor, your peers, your sponsors, to make it happen, uh managers and mentors and sponsors they are there to support you. They are there to give you direction guidance ideas, but it is your responsibility to know what you want to do.

B

We don't know what you like, we don't know where you want to be in two years, so really take ownership, and one thing that I recommend is using gitlab projects to track your career development.

B

uh I had a friend that I worked with before who received they never understood why they weren't getting a promotion and what was happening is they were going from manager to manager uh for whatever reasons, and they were blaming the managers and then I said well, if you are blaming your managers and you know, managers can change, then maybe you should make a change yourself and take hold of your own career, so I recommended gitlab projects.

B

uh I use gitlab projects because they're, personal and private and you can track your goals and then, as you get a new manager or you get a new promotion or position, they just see what you've already been working on and so your your work, your growth is not interrupted, uh and the last thing I would say is documentation and transparency.

B

If it's not written it just might not happen, or maybe it never happened. Right uh engineering managers have a lot of direct reports. They're not gonna, see every awesome thing. Everyone is doing uh so it's important for you to document your wins your accomplishments.

B

Also for some of us who have imposter syndrome, probably not you, but there are people out there. It helps to document what you've done. To kind of tell yourself wait. Wait. I really. I really did do a lot this year, because you're so busy working that you don't realize all the great things you did so I would say document all right. That's all.

A

Yeah, that was awesome and I completely agree with the documentation and um just wanted to add a little note. We do have um on the career development page, which I can link in this video description, um some guidelines on how you can use epics to track your career development, so super similar to using projects. So um I'll, add that in so people can take a look at that as well um yeah. So how often do you have career development conversations with your team members?

A

B

So I might be a little radical here. um I see career development as an ongoing conversation and for me, a lot of it is feedback so pretty much. Every week I provide feedback in three different flavors appreciation, which is I appreciate what you're doing you had a great week. You did great here evaluation.

B

You were expected to do a and you didn't do it. Let's talk about why you did it didn't do it and coaching, which is, I see, you're struggling here. Let me help you out by giving you some tips right. um Everything that I'm doing when I give feedback is directing you to growing.

B

So it's not very formal during the year. My formal performance conversations are the mid-year and the annual conversation. I don't want you to always be thinking every time I talk to you, it's performance, okay, I'm going to be performing and developing I'm not going to be exceeding.

B

This is about growing and if it's about growing, then for me it's more about feedback on a regular basis. That way, there are no surprises, and if there is something that's going in the wrong direction, we can kind of align it and get you right back on track immediately. Instead of waiting until performance review time.

A

Yeah, I think, that's really great to have it as an ongoing conversation.

A

So um I know career conver or career development can be kind of like hard for people to talk about, like it's a really vulnerable place to be. So what steps do you take to get team members comfortable talking about career development right.

B

So I think, first of all, I come to the conversation really excited because it's like my thing I like to see people grow and I try to stay away from words like career development because they're scary for some people. So I start asking them. What do you like to do? What tell me about a project? You've worked on that you're, most proud of. Would you like to do more about that? Tell me about a part of get lab that you think we could improve.

B

Do you have ideas, so I really try to get to the heart of what they like, and I try to envision what career development would look like in my head, based on what they're telling me and then I started saying: well, you know what you could really grow your skills in this area and also help the company by doing this, and I get them really excited about it, because, if someone's talking about something they like, then it's not a chore.

B

It's not a pain to do it's something that they're interested in and that's how I kind of make them more comfortable talking about it.

A

That's perfect: I love that. So uh what do you do if a team member hasn't talked to you about career development or they haven't brought it up to you in a one-on-one? So.

B

I bring it up, uh I ask them, for example, if they're not a maintainer, are you interested in becoming a maintainer, and this is the value of becoming a maintainer?

B

You really learn a lot about all of the code base outside of your team, uh and I start kind of searching for like, like I said before, areas that are that are interesting to them, but I would bring them up and then I would ask them: what do you think career development means to you and then again try to get aligned on what career development really is, and then I would say in my opinion, it's synonymous to employee development or growth and kind of get them.

B

Typically, people who are not having those conversations have some issue with the terminology, so I just try to move them away from that into what they actually want to do, which is grow and learn, and everybody in technology or any other or part of the organization knows that you have to keep learning. You have to keep training and then it's not as scary.

A

Yeah, that's a great point. So, as a manager do you have advice for other manager, other managers who are wanting to talk to their team members about career development.

B

Yes, what I mentioned earlier, I really recommend the gitlab project or the epics. It is most important that the team members own their career development and use whatever terminology they're comfortable with. If you can tell they're, not comfortable with same career development, you can say growth plan, you can say fy 22 goals, whatever language they're comfortable with, so that they can get beyond just the title and then just get right to the works.

B

So I would say that um I would also say that if we can align, however, you have those conversations with like your culture amp and your mid-year and your annual, so that it's all fitting into the same single source of truth. Somehow that will be very helpful for your manager and for you um and and definitely make the alignment between the the credit values- that's very important as well. So I would say that and then for managers. The other thing I would ask them to do is have regular check-ins.

B

If you don't, they might forget about it um and also keep your keep your eyes and ears open for opportunities. If you have a team member that wants to be more engaged with cross-team uh projects, if there's a working group recommend it talk to them about it, that's one way to keep the conversation. You can bring something to the conversation too, or you can say: oh there's a mentoring program over here and you're. A senior it'd be really great if you could spread your knowledge and expertise and help out another team member.

B

When and as well as supporting your collaboration value and bring up. Oh and remember we were talking about this was one of your goals for the year. So those are those are lessons or tips. I would get.

A

That's really great, I love that advice. One thing that really stuck out to me was the terminology like performance management. Can sound really, like scary, I think to a lot of people versus career development or growth plan, or something like that. So that's a really great call out.

A

Well, those are all the questions that I had for you today. So I just want to thank you for spending time with me. I think this will be really helpful for managers wanting to have conversations with their team members as well as team members who listen into this on how they maybe can have better conversations with their managers as well. So thank you all right. Thanks, jc see.

B