The Bad News

I’m saddened to say: I was working towards a management position at Grubhub, and after the 2024 Year End Review, it was determined that I would not be offered the position.

Since late 2023, I’ve been taking over the role of Engineering Manager for the Front End team that represents the Care org at Grubhub. The process involves a little bit of a leap – instead of doing what I normally do (as a Senior Engineer), I took on management tasks like running weekly rituals, stand-up meetings and retros, estimation meetings. I was responsible for estimating and running projects for the team. In short a lot of management stuff.

The process doesn’t involve an immediate assumption of the role/title. It involves doing the work first, to prove you can do the work. And while normally this is a 6 month evaluation period, mine ended up going for two cycles and spanned 12 months.

So all told, I’ve been doing a job for over a year… and found out that I won’t be doing the job, after all. While I may disagree with the overall outcome, I do see why the position wasn’t offered. I felt that I was improving in the role, but just not at a rate that was deemed appropriate for the role.

I’ve been reflecting a lot on things – on work, on work/life balance, on the nature of management, on the nature of self-identity through work. It’s complicated. I have been wondering (and still do wonder) where that line is, between being a good fit for a role and changing/improving oneself for a role, versus immutable personality traits that are simply at odds with the qualities (or perceived qualities) of an effective manager.

For now – it’s going to be an interesting and somewhat tumultuous next few weeks. I’ll be handing over a lot of responsibilities to my manager, who will be taking over as EM for the team.

There’s an odd feeling I have now. What I absolutely should be doing is handing over responsibilities for various projects (because I’m no longer being paid to be responsible for them). But it feels like I’m just shirking aspects of my job, and dumping them on someone else. I know this isn’t the case, but it’s muscle memory – it feels like I’m being dismissive and lazy and a bad worker/employee. Despite the fact that this is absolutely what I need to be doing right now.

I haven’t really coded much in over a year. I’ve been joking with the team that I’ll be lucky if I remember how to even open VSCode. Shifting roles to look at the world through a manager’s eyes was an interesting transition. Learning how to see the world again through the lens of an Individual Contributor is going to be an equally interesting journey.

[CC photo via Vladislav Babienko]

Related:
New Role: Senior Software Engineer at Grubhub
How to Avoid Catastrophe
Two Essays on Management That I Really Love to Share
My Promotion: Director of Design Services