Ask HN: How to deal with stress and overspecced responsibility?

Simple solution would be to ask to do less, but make sure to frame it correctly. Since you were given more responsibility over time I'm making the assumption that the VP trusts you and your work. I'd suggest going to the VP and telling them that you're falling behind and it would be beneficial for you and them if someone else were either hired on or brought in to share the load. It's not a problem of you not being able to do the work, rather you're not able to find the time for everything.

In part your VP has already provided you the solution "allocated headcount for a large team". Question is can you keep all the balls in the air successfully while you go through the hiring cycle.

I have talked with many CIO's who have gone through similar transitions in their own career. Starting as very technical and needing to transition to managing people, corporate functions and major projects. These transitions and letting go of personally being the smartest technical person in the room is often difficult. You move from your comfort zone of being very competent into a "newbie" role trying to figure it all out.

Each company is different. Your description makes it sound as though your company hasn't really thought it through very well - "just give him resources and he will figure it out". Sometimes this kind of sink or swim approach works but it could clearly end badly for you and the company.

You are no good to the company if you seriously burn out and crash. It feels like you need to push harder on the getting training and help. And, make sure your headcount lets you hire somebody in a support role that can hopefully take care of a lot of the little details of running your department.

I'm in a similar situation and have no idea how to solve it.

I've been thinking of pulling together a mastermind of other programmers-turned-executive so we can talk about these problems together. I'm seriously peter principally-ing over here. ;)

Anybody interested?

Me:

Mid 30s Director of Technology Team of 10 + part timers. No College. Two failed saas products.

Having been in a similar situation, try to decompose the problems. It'll be much easier make sense of it in simple chunks then group them into buckets.

Next don't do it all yourself--it's suicide. Delegate those responsibility groups one at a time as you catch that new owner up to speed. If you don't know yourself, then point/pair them with someone who does.

Once everything is delegated your new job is helping those new managers succeed and focusing on the things where you uniquely bring value.

You can do this, just take it a step at a time. It only feels insurmountable looking at it all at once, it's an illusion.

Delegate with the understanding that people will make mistakes and be supportive. Seems like you're transitioning to higher leadership. Focus on checking in frequently and make sure things are moving in the right direction while providing the needed help in problem solving when necessary. It takes a lot of trust too.

Make sure you get a title and compensation change that is proportional to the additional responsibility and increased value being delivered to the company. You may be surprised how that will change the nature and quantity of demands being made on your time.

If you keep saying yes (to everything you did before) and yes (to everything you are discovering you can do), it is only human nature for individual requests to increase to the point where they collectively overwhelm you. You could individually re-negotiate boundaries and committments, but that itself is work and requires political skills. A public change in title and a financial change in compensation will require executive approval and that process will help change company-wide perception of what tasks are the best use of your time.

Once that is out of the way (increasing your price as a form of demand/flow control), find good books and external mentors on:

  Leadership (managing down _and_ up) [1]
  Project Management (execution logistics) [2][3]
  Communication & Politics & Sales (human semantics)

[1] Being a Manager is lonely, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8881752

[2] How to run successful projects (3rd Ed), http://www.amazon.com/How-Run-Successful-Projects-III/dp/020...

[3] Adaptive Software Development, http://www.amazon.com/Adaptive-Software-Development-Collabor...

I think your first step is to delegate some of your responsibilities ASAP. If you stop writing code and building estimates (but keep doing code reviews!) and hand off parts of the new hire training, that will free up time for other responsibilities. It will also help the people on your team grow so they can carry even more of the load for you.

The Manager Tools podcasts have a lot of very useful advice that I think would help you. I recommend subscribing to their "Basics" feed to get started, and then listen to the full feed. http://www.manager-tools.com/podcasts/basics-rss.xml

You can see their whole "map of the podcast" here: https://www.manager-tools.com/map-universe/trinity-one-ones. It's overwhelming at first because they have almost 1000 casts. But you can navigate through the list to find the topic you're struggling with, and download the podcasts from there.

I've experienced the transition from being an engineer to a manager, and then from a manager to director, from director to VP, and now CEO.

I can tell you by far the most material impact on my ability to take on more responsibility has been having a great manager (not just a mentor). A manager knows what work you're being asked to do, sees you try to do that work, and can give you feedback on the work that you're doing. A mentor just does not have that context.

It's so important that one of the questions I ask when interviewing people (at any level) is tell me about a great manager you've had. And a shockingly large number of people (even directors or VPs with impressive resumes) will say "I never had one, but I wish I did."

This is a longer-term advice, but I would make it a career goal if you want to grow to try to find a really great manager.

I used to be the only developer at my company, responsible for all of our internal web software and outward facing web software, and developing all custom code. I had 10+ projects going at any given time as well as catching any bug reports/questions for any of our internal web software.

I reported directly to the CEO. I coped with this as long as I could fighting through burn out until I finally let him know we needed to expand the team. I was buckling under all the tasks. I spelled out clearly how it was far too much for any one person to handle.

We've slowly over time expanded the team until we now have 5 developers, which is still less bandwidth than we want but it makes things a lot more manageable, because we now as an organization accept a more realistic view of what we can do with the team we have.

I would say try talking to your manager about the reality of your situation. Have a real conversation about your concerns. If they go unheard or nothing comes of it, then it's probably time to move on.

Congratulations on your promotion to Director of Engineering!

Now would be a good time to assess your manager's history and learn to delegate the things you may have been doing on your own to others like they did. Your manager should be able to help you do this.

If this is an established company then this can't be the first time they've been in this situation, so there's probably a misunderstanding somewhere.

If this is a new company then it could be that they are learning this process as well.

If you haven't actually been promoted or your manager can't or won't help you grow into your new position and work through these issues then something's wrong. Beware.

Contrary to what many people think, few of us have managers who can consistently and successfully lay out the optimal career path and help us achieve it. I'd say there are three main reasons:

1. It's really hard to do.

2. Few people have themselves been trained on management.

3. Faced with 1 and 2, people focus on their own, more familiar personal deliverables.

Therefore, if you want things to change, you'll probably have to make some specific suggestions. And to do that, you should do some homework. I highly recommend starting with Managing Humans by Michael Lopp (http://www.amazon.com/Managing-Humans-Humorous-Software-Engi...) or maybe The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz (http://www.amazon.com/Hard-Thing-About-Things-Building/dp/00...). Spend an hour or two with each book and you'll have a better idea what can be done, and why.

What you're finding is that working as both a full-time manager and full-time engineer is very difficult, borderline impossible. Eventually, you'll have to choose. An increasing number of small companies are starting to understand this reality, and allow their top people to grow into either technical leadership or management leadership roles. Expecting both, simultaneously, is not realistic.

Some of what you describe probably falls under the category of tasks that, if you are smart, you can just figure out (gap analysis, for example, whilst a wonderfully bullshit bingo compliant term, is fundamentally quite straightforward), and no training or mentoring is really required beyond a bit of practice and some copy and paste from previous examples (and perhaps a bit of bluffing, here and there). I'm moderately certain that most people just make this stuff up, and it usually works out okay. I think confidence is probably key.

Where your responsibilities start to stretch to, say, handling conflict between stakeholders, other stakeholders, and non-stakeholders, I suspect that you will either thrive on that sort of situation - and connive ways to benefit from it - or you will always hate it, and I'm not sure any amount of support or training will really help here.

Lastly, if you are doing HR-type duties, then you really do need training here. Sometimes common sense really does not apply here, only prior experience, and you should not be expected to handle these types of tasks without proper assistance and guidance from people qualified to do that.

Something nobody seems to have mentioned, which I think is actually very important, is to make sure you take time off to get away from work and not get burnt out.

I took time to learn about increasing my productivity and learning how to delegate tasks.

It was great to have my name on lots of projects, but after a while, it becomes impossible to manage it all.

Read or listen to the 4 Hour Work Week, its really about 10X your productivity.

Find a mentor - I've been through a similar situation years ago (happy to help if interested). As others have said, make sure to get a comp/title change in response to you taking on additional responsibility. What I think you'll find as you grow in your career, is that what you say no to (and your ability to focus) will become much more important than your ability to take on more and more tasks. We're all human and will have breaking points, so maintaining the ability to focus is crucial.

Don't let your lack of degree or business training discourage you. A lot of leaders at start-ups today have similar backgrounds, and are learning on the fly. One area I found difficulty assessing was identify which stress was me growing into a role versus which stress was self-imposed. I worked with an executive coach to help learn the difference and make some small tweaks to my behavior.

Hang in there, say no more often, and reach out to others who have gone through a similar transition for help.

Take a week or two off. Come back and find out what went to hell without you around. Delegate those duties to your underlings, or quickly hire underlings well suited for those duties if you don't have any yet.

In parallel with the direct suggestions, address the stress itself. Prolonged stress limits brain function and therefore your ability to turn the situation around.

Do exercise coupled with controlled breathing, specifically with prolonged exhales, which tells our nervous system that there is no fight here. Do a tiny walk outside every two hours of coding, and consider yoga. Personally I also signed up for Blue Apron or similar mailed recipe kits because I found those instructions to be a relaxing level of activity, better than TV but still winding down, and there are those healthy diet benefits. I also rigged a sit / stand workstation with email on the low monitor and code on the high ones so switching position just happens.

Schedule. Schedule. Schedule.

It's very important that you allocate some time to each area - upto 2 hr blocks of time for coding and architecture, 20 minutes for management tasks and a block of time for firefighting/reacting.

Also schedule in time for exercise, sleep, and just general downtime. All of which are very important.

Lastly, drop anything that's not important and delegate whatever you can. From your description it looks like you will be getting new hires to help you out soon. Just ride it out until you get support and make sure you don't burn out along the way. All the best!

This doesn't directly address your question I suppose, but one thing that I have found to de-stress myself in times like this is to take a moment to consider the achievements you've made (with no formal training, etc). You're clearly super competent, can solve all sorts of problems, and a natural leader. This is great for you long-term. You will most likely have tons of great job opportunities in the future, which will most likely allow you to have the lifestyle you wish in the future. To me anyway, that can be a de-stressing line of thought, because while your current situation may be stressful, you can genuinely look at it and say that it is temporary (how temporary, I don't know). Even if the stress may be somewhat baked into your job now, you'll be able to address it in the future by getting yourself an awesome position. Easier to shake the present off if you realize you're in for a great future.

Delegate. There is a distinct disconnect between you saying "allocated headcount for a large team" yet you also saying "I'm still personally tasked with building out the architecture, writing code...".

e.g. Sick leave - grab a warm body & tell them they're in charge of sick leave now.

If you're reporting to the VP then you are reasonably high up the foodchain and thus you are (or should be) entitled to make calls like that.

If you manage people, and report to a VP, that means your title should be "director," at least by valley standards.

Hopefully your VP can serve as an internal mentor and coach? An easy way to get started is to ask for advice on some particular point, and grow the discussion out from there over a few weeks.

If you manage two people, you should still have time to code yourself. If you manage six or more, and have business/design/project leadership responsibilities, you probably won't have a lot of time for coding on average. If you manage ten or more people, you should split the people in sub groups and get managers for those groups. Verify changes with your VP before actually implementing them, but make sure you rub the agenda of your team.

A budget mindset is helpful here, often critical. You need a time budget: brain dump your tasks, estimate time required for each task, put tasks on a calendar, repeat daily/weekly. I have never found a perfect method or tool to triage this fire-hydrant-level of workload. The best I can offer is, make time for it like your sanity depends on it. Getting on top of it is difficult initially, but it's temporary, and thereafter becomes manageable. Now you have crude metrics. Your VP can't argue with the laws of physics. This work on your time budget is like meditation: If you can't spend 10 minutes on it, then you need 3 hours.

Some times when people are self-taught, they lack confidence because they don't know what they don't know. This can lead to less competent colleagues, who happen to have a more aggressive personality than you, to move things in a bad direction. You sound like you have been entrusted with much. You probably know more than you realize.

It is critical to communicate your situation and needs to your VP. Unless you have immature management running the company, they need to know if you are drowning. Keep it objective (the metrics help with this). You don't want to come off complainy or the victim. Don't sugar coat the situation or be timid. You have some level of pull - the last thing your VP would want is for you to walk.

Don't ignore your health. Stress quickly becomes a vicious cycle, where once your willpower is depleted you make poor decisions, which only leads to worse stress. Whatever you eat, ask yourself what it is fueling. Get exercise. Unplug from work. Get enough sleep. See a doctor, or take supplements if needed. I had a big breakthrough in life when I started taking a supplement package. It pushed me over a tipping point. I was successful on a diet I had quit at least 30 times before, lost 40-50 lbs, no longer had afternoon crash in energy, and am much more productive even when I don't get enough sleep (I have a 1-year-old). My personal and professional lives improved significantly from getting my health in order.

The trick is to hire people below you so that your job becomes coordination and a set of minor tasks (HR, high-level architecture, roadmapping). For that you can't really delegate hiring as you need the right people in the right job. But you can definitely delegate training new hires, software architecture, writing code, product management and QA. I don't know how much headcount you've been given but if you have to manage more than 5 people your role should only involve management.

Break down all the tasks you are doing and are supposed to be doing. Every task that you can see yourself doing for more than 8h/week needs to be done by somebody you hire.

Before you jump in and go on a hiring spree, make sure to list the top 5 outcomes (with measurement) you want to achieve by hiring this person. It also helps to list the personality traits/skillset you think they will need to achieve those outcomes. Using this approach you know what you are looking for and frankly, this approach has helped me bring in people that completely own their domain and almost need no guidance (beyond the initial onboarding). Ironically the goal you should have as a manager is to make yourself obsolete.

Tons of great comments in this thread.

I would recommend the book "essentialism".

You can't do it all. You need to define what is the most important things and avoid everything else. This is how you get balance and reduce stress.