The value in execution

As you grow in your career, you tend to move away from execution roles. You increasingly spend more time doing management and less time executing. Sometimes, you even get promoted right into a position where you become totally useless.

Companies tend to push you into these management roles if you want to grow. The Individual Contributor (IC) path often has a shorter trajectory, while the management path is usually longer. Perhaps this makes sense at an organizational level (you manage more people), but in terms of impact, I have serious doubts. Every day, I see engineers who have far more cross-departmental impact than positions supposedly designed for it. The difference is that the engineers have the power of execution, while many managers actually don’t: others execute for them.

That’s why I believe it’s so crucial to remain capable of getting down to execution (or getting your hands dirty, as some dismissively call it). I’m not saying you have to be constantly executing (which many would label as micromanagement), but there are critical projects where you absolutely must support your team.

I see in my own teams that when managers share the actual workload, or are capable of supporting their team’s execution during tough times, the manager is better regarded and the team becomes more cohesive. Supporting execution doesn’t necessarily mean just writing code. It can mean simplifying a problem, helping to minimize a trade-off, or assisting with a complex technical decision.

I’m writing this today because I watched two independent teams collaborate incredibly fast on a common problem, and I believe it had a lot to do with the fact that the managers got our hands dirty quickly.