2021年的5月10号我开始带实习了。谷歌内部对intern host的要求挺多的，除了参加前期培训，还需要根据timeline设计实习项目的milestone 以及安排其他1-1s等，我和另外一个co-host一起合作指导。由于是第一次带实习，这对我来说确实是一个挑战，特别是在英文环境中，准备趁此机会好好的巩固一下之前学到的softskills, 以及学习新的management 技能。此外，在hosts check in weekly meeting 中我从其他 hosts, co-hosts身上也学到很多东西，主要方面是他们的表达，对intern的指导方式等等。

这本书是在一次connect program 中一个senior 告诉我的。 <<The Manager's Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change>>

Management 101

What to expect from a manager?

help navigate difficult situations
figure out what need to learn
enable you to have focus, what is important to focus on

1-1s meeting with your manager for:

good work relationship. The bedrock of strong teams is human connection, which leads to trust
not a status report, plan first with checklist for what to discuss privately
feedback, not just performance review, used to write the self-review
Behavioral feedback, especailly when new to workspace
presentation feedback, review content and suggest changes
design document feedback, areas to improve
feedback and discuss on career ladder, what to focus on to get promoted. Assign stretch project to help you grow and learn new things (自己补充一下)
set next short/long term goal,
what I can do to make difference and aligned with expectation
prioritize things to focus
tasks that have interaction and collaboration with other teammates

when become more senior, the feedback changes somewhat from personal feedback to team/strategy related inputs, you should drive your 1-1s and bring topics to discuss.

Sometimes delivering feedback quickly is more vaulable than waiting for a convenient time to say someting. Praising in public, reinforces what positive behavior looks like.

Find conference to attend and class to take, book to read, point you to an expert in company who can help you learn something. (My responsibility)

promotion packet: set of materials that the committee will review.

Create and build strong network of peers, from schoolmates to office mates/teammates, socialize with all sorts of people. Has a track record of people who have left and to found new companies

Suffer career uncertainty at various stages of your career, need to figure out what you want to go next.

Mentoring

Mentoring is important for junior team members, for example be mentor of new hires/intern. Take time to discuss project, sit at the whiteboard, go through the code together.

How to build effective mentoring relationships?

For Intern

welcome email, onboarding, office or remote, meeting people, learning the system.
ensure intern does not feel lost and overwhelmed by the volume of new information.
prepare yourself for intern project, design milestones, roadmap, tasks, toolkits.
walk through the breakdown(milestone or task) with the intern, listen and answer questions, can draw in whiteboard, etc. (自己补充的)
live demo, chart to explain the project big picture.

Listening is one of core skills of a quality manager.

People are not good at saying precisely what they mean in a way that others can exactly understand. Listening goes beyond hearing the words the mentee is saying.

If you don’t understand the question mentee asked, repeat the question in a different way and let him correct you.

Mentee is probably nervious, trying to please you, trying hard not to look stupid and may not ask questions even he does not understand,

In the first several weeks, learn the frequency that you need to check in with him to provide right adjustments. once a week regardless.

For New Hire

Onboarding, build your and new hire’s network, relationship goes on for a lot longer.

Unspoken (不言而喻，潜规则) rules are foreign to newcomer, for example:

don’t take long vacation in business critical weeks
approximately how long you are expected to struggle with something before asking for help

Onboarding document(we should have this and new hire should edit it up-to-date) should consistently evolve to meet the changes of the workspace itself.

You may be an introvert, or someone who does not find socializing easy, but conscious effort and practice in getting to know new people and helping them succeed will pay off.

For Technical/Career

Help to be more productive, to get up to speed faster. Tell mentee what you expect from him, prepared meeting agenda to ask questions.

It’s OK to say no to mentoring. (reason can be current workload, vacation plan, other commitments) Mentee, think about what you want to get out of the relationship and comre prepared to the sessions.

Good/Bad Manager

Alpha geek (很有能力但自视甚高，人际能力差), make absolutely terrible managers, very harmful to collaboration and deeply undermine.

Key Takeaways

As a mentor, focus on the three actions:

be courious and open-minded You may find areas you thought understood but cannot explain clearly to new people, see the world through fresh eyes
listen and speak their language mentoring forces you to hone your communication skills
make connections the career ultimately succeeds or fails on the strength of your network.

Tech Lead

It is a leadership position, even when it’s not a complete management position. It is a set of responsibilities, more than just a good engineer: a good communicator, write clear documents, good presentations, explain what is going on to other people, good at prioritizing, push work forward.

From <<Talking with Tech Leads>>: A leader, responsible for a development team, who spends at least 30% of their time writing code with the team.

A new major technical skill: project management.

Tech lead trick: the willingness to step away from the code and figure out how to balance your technical commitments with the work the whole team needs.

It is natural for humans to perfer activities they have mastered, learning new thing sometimes feel quite uncomfortable (through trial and error).

一定要做好balance, scheduling，特别是不要无计划地卷入各种会议，否则coding会被持续地打断，无法集中注意力. 或者是提前把coding tasks break down成几个部分，逐个完成。

Tech Lead 101

Taking a wide view of work and keep project moving. 分别扮演不同的角色:

System architect and Business analyst: Have a giid sense of the overall architecture of the systems and a solid understanding of how to design complex software. Understand business requirements and translate them into software.

Project planner: Break work down into rough deliverables, gather input from the experts on your team, start identifying priorities.

Software developer, expert in your code base: Writing code, communicate challenges (for tech lead, not too much coding)

Spending time outside of code.

How to be a great tech lead:

understand the architecture, get a sense for it, visualize it, know where the data lives, how it flows between systems, how it reflects the products it is supporting.
be a team player, looking at tricky, boring, annoying ateas of technical need and unstick thoes areas. Stretch yourself.
lead technical decisions, what decisions must be made by you and which should be delegated to others.
communication skills.

Project Management

Break down project, complex end goal down into smaller pieces, identify which pieces can be down in parallel and which must be done in sequence.

可能遇到bumps, bugs, unexpected delays and the things that get missed, could not perfectly predicated.

break down the work Using spreadsheet, start with the biggest pieces, breaking down into smaller and then even smaller ones, ask for help from person who knows the parts. Then ordering the work.
push through the details and the unknowns
run the project and adjust the plan as you go How far the project has came and how far it is from completion
use the insights gained in the planning process to manage requirements change
revisit the details as you get close to completion Decicde where the line for “good enough” is, make launch plan, rollback plan.

仍然需要增强技术能力，达到一定程度后，再学习更多的management skills 以及走上管理岗位.

Managing People

Figure out your management style.

how do you like to be praised, in public or private?
what is the preferred methods of communication for serious feedback? In writing so have time to digest or less formal verbal feedback?
what are you excited about to work here?
how do I know when you are in bad mood or annoyed, Are there any things that I should be aware of?
are there any manager behaviors that you know you hate?
any clear career goals that I should know about to help you achieve them?

Ohter example First 1-1s questions.

Have onboarding document and get new hire involved to update it, add comments, etc.

Create a 30/60/90 day plan, include basic goals, getting up to speed on the code, committing a bug fix or performing a release. This can help to catch mishire.

Disciss expectations:

how often 1:1s and meets?
how often to review the work, weekly summary via email/chat?
how long he should work along trying to solve a problem?
what point he should ask for help?