From Mentor to Manager: How to Get Into Engineering Management | Asana’s Amanda Sopkin

**Amanda Sopkin** (0:00)
If you've been at a company for a long time, you kind of gradually accumulate more knowledge in particular areas, and then suddenly you're the only person who knows about these systems, and then you get involved in hiring, so you're doing that. And then you decide that you want to run this particular kind of meeting, or be responsible for this other thing, and then it can be kind of difficult to hand those off.
On my team, we try to rotate different areas of technical expertise. So like someone might be responsible for answering questions about one thing one quarter, and then the next quarter we might say, okay, this other person is going to take that over, so that we're not building too many single points of failure.

**Conor Bronsdon** (0:38)
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**Amanda Sopkin** (1:28)
Thank you, good to be here.

**Conor Bronsdon** (1:29)
Yeah, it's really wonderful to have you on here because you're a passionate people manager. And to be frank, we recently released a series on the career journey of an engineering leader on the show. And I'll say if you're listening or watching on YouTube, if you haven't checked it out, I highly recommend it. It's full of great advice on... One of the topics we discussed on there was trying to understand that kind of fork in an engineering leader's road where you decide, hey, I want to go be a staff engineer, I want to be a senior engineer, I want to take this deep, icy route, versus I want to go manage teams.
And I'd love to know, how did you make that decision?

**Amanda Sopkin** (2:02)
Yeah, so I started out as a software engineer, like a lot of people, and I think the most formative experience was I mentored an intern kind of early in my career. And I found that experience to be really interesting and fulfilling and kind of challenging in ways that software engineering wasn't. So that was my first kind of spark of interest in engineering management.
And I knew I wanted to try it after that. I moved into kind of a tech lead role, and then I went into engineering management after that, kind of with the attitude of like, we'll try it out. I could go back to being an IC if I really don't like it. But I was fortunate to enjoy it a lot.

**Conor Bronsdon** (2:44)
I think that's a great point, this idea that you can't go back. Most great VPs of engineering I talk to say that they love to give people the opportunity to go try it out. And it's like, yeah, if it doesn't work out for you, great. We know you're a great dev. That's probably why we thought you might be a great engineering manager. Let's bring you back to that. So folks who are listening who are maybe thinking about that transition, I would really encourage you to try it out, because maybe you'll love it. But it sounds like you have some early indicators that you notice when you're talking to team members about whether they will be a good fit, or whether they maybe won't enjoy it as much.
You mentioned that interest in mentorship and really enjoying that process for you.
What are some of the indicators that you see from team members about whether they're maybe a better fit for an IC path, or you think they might be a great fit for leadership?

**Amanda Sopkin** (3:30)
Yes, I like to dig into kind of their initial reasons. And if someone's primarily looking for role level progression or more money, those are usually not good reasons to go into engineering management. I like to look at their relationships with people, their mentorship experiences, signs that they find that kind of work fulfilling and not draining. And then from there, it's nice if you can try it out in kind of a lightweight way. It's really easy generally to do some kind of lightweight mentorship, either with an intern or a new grad, and then see how that goes.