Episode 378: Too much leadership and awkward zoom silence

Soft Skills Engineering

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. I’ve managed an ML team in a small company for ~2 years now. I created an 8 person team from scratch and I’m super proud of the team I’ve built. However, I miss being an engineer and wish I could spend more time coding. I was considering asking for a role change to IC, but out of nowhere my manager offered to me a promotion to head of platform engineering. I would have 3 engineering teams reporting to me - about 30 people altogether.

   I have trouble saying no to new opportunities but can I put the genie back in the bottle? If I get “Peter principled”, I feel like it would be challenging or embarrassing to return to IC work.How can I stay close to the ML side while managing other teams? Would other teams feel dejected if they know I had a “favorite” team?

2. Is it just me or do people also find silences over Zoom unbearable? I work in a team that is mostly remote, and I find myself deliberately logging into meetings late to avoid the silence or the stilted, awkward smalltalk. If i’m running the meeting, I kickoff at 1 minute past to avoid having to deal with that dead air. I also find myself too quick to fill pauses during meetings. I never have this problem in person meetings. I’ve been in the same team now for nearly a year and I still dread uncomfortable silences over Zoom. How do I get over this?