Daniel Rizea
- Daniel Rizea is a director of engineering at Google.
- He writes that "non-money-associated debts" like sleep debt will catch up with you.
- Rizea also says that it's important to talk to your manager about your career aspirations.
Reflecting on the past decade, I have experienced accelerated growth in my career. I made it to director level in 10 years.
It all started with my initial role as a junior engineer. After a few months, I sought a more challenging learning experience, so I started my own company, which eventually failed. I then joined a new startup and two acquisitions later, I became director of engineering in one of the biggest European wearable offices of Google.
Throughout my journey of rapid growth, I learned many valuable lessons. Some were taught by mentors, while others were found in books — but the majority of my knowledge came from learning from mistakes.
Here are five things I learned — I hope that they will help you grow in your career as well.
1. Debt will find you
This is a very important lesson from the finance world. Debt can be your ally if you know how to leverage it or it can ruin you if not properly managed.
There are multiple non-money-associated debts that you may encounter in your career. Just to name a few of them:
Sleep debt happens when you stay up late a couple of weeks in a row, and will take you most likely on a path to burnout.
Technical debt that you ignore in order to catch a critical release, then another, then another, until you break the entire system and lose the trust of your customer.
Management debt appears when you ignore management duties, skip 1:1s, stop sharing the mission and things start to pile up. The worst part of it all is that you don't even realize it until it is too late.
Early in my career, I was under the impression that if I had a tighter deadline, I could just work for more hours in the weeks before the milestone and make it and then continue as normal after the deadline. I was simply wrong.
When I was in my startup days we had this huge launch event where there would have been a lot of press for the unveiling of the product. We pushed really hard the weeks before to make the deadline happen and we made it. The after-effects were that the team was really underproductive the weeks after, myself included. All that sleep deprivation and stress took its toll.
If you take the month before and the month after the deadline, on average the velocity was under if no heroics were involved. But if you look at the outcome it was worth it. We managed to have a successful launch and got some very positive press that landed us more sales and visibility. The debt made sense.
Not all debt is bad and you should leverage it, but you need to be fully aware of the impact of your decisions. If you are in a leadership position, make sure you get your team to support your decisions and not sign them up unknowingly.
2. Perception is reality
This one I had to learn the hard way.
It took some time until I finally understood it. Also don't imagine I figured it out all by myself. My manager had to spell it out for me.
My teams were handling a critical project that was on a hard timeline. I couldn't figure out why even if everything was on a good path, there was still a sentiment that things were not going well. Critical meetings on status were popping up on the calendar, questions were raised about the release schedule and all of this was creating distractions for me and my team.
One day I had a chat with my manager about this and I asked for advice because I failed to understand where all of the sentiment was coming from. The project was at risk but still on schedule with a good confidence level of delivery. I failed to understand where the perception was coming from so I was ignoring it. It's just perception, right?
But my manager told me bluntly: "Daniel, perception is reality, it's just how it is and you need to manage that and also understand where it is coming from. Otherwise you risk all the good work to be for nothing".
At that point I understood what needed to be done and that I was not setting my teams up for long-term success. I wasn't touching all stakeholders in my comms and I was not proactively addressing their worries. My gap in communication created a void that got filled up mostly with worries that had no grounds. I made sure that I did a better job at communicating progress and touching a broader stakeholder group, answering questions, and providing full visibility on plans. And just like that, things drastically improved.
Keep in mind, you also need to address and manage the perception of your most valuable stakeholders, it will do wonders.
3. Choose asymmetric opportunities
This really made a big difference early in my career.
I remember when I needed to decide between staying with my jr. software engineering job at a big company or joining a risky hardware startup and becoming their first employee. I went with the risky startup, and it turned out to be the best decision for me back then.
As an engineer, I am very rational and use probabilities and data in making big decisions. A lot of my friends were surprised that I went for a risky startup, but for me, I chose an asymmetric opportunity that had manageable downside and unlimited upside. You need to judge a decision by the data you had when you made it and not using the power of hindsight, so let me give you the details.
I have always wanted to experience startups, so joining one was aligned with what I wanted. The downside was that I would get a 35% pay cut and that I could be out of a job in 1 year's time. The upside was I would have learned 10x more things than in my previous job, and get to meet a lot of startup people while also having a very slim chance of becoming rich. Taking into account my personal situation at that time, it made sense to join the startup.
If you find yourself in a situation where there is limited and manageable downside but unlimited upside, then congratulations! You have stumbled upon an asymmetrical risk opportunity that can accelerate your career.
4. You can't ride the wave forever
This is an oversight I have seen a lot of people making that ends up hurting their careers. Usually, this happens when you get some achievements under your belt and you try to ride them forever. You need to pay careful attention because everything has a due date.
Every time your stakeholders, manager, job changes or enough time passes by, you need to prove your worth again. What you have done in the past may get you good grace, but it will also set high expectations for the future. You have to make sure you are filling and surpassing those expectations.
Going through two acquisitions this was the biggest learning that has helped me continue to nurture my career. Whenever my stakeholders changed, I needed to prove again that I was competent, trustworthy, and could get things done.
5. You are solely responsible for your career
As a manager, I say that with the best intentions possible. Good managers are there to support you, the best even guide you but in the end, you are responsible for your career. You need to figure out what you want, put in the work, learn the skills, and deliver the results.
One of the most important things is to not shy away from career conversations.
In my first job, I was an engineer and I wanted to experiment with a leadership role in the future.
It was hard for me to talk about my career aspirations but eventually, I did it. After the discussion, my manager said perfect, when an opportunity comes I know you will want to give it a shot. I thought it was far-fetched but a couple of weeks later it happened. A new intern joined our team and I was designated to be their buddy for guidance, onboarding, and task allocation. That was my first interaction with leadership.
You don't know when to have career conversations with your manager? It's simple, you can leverage your 1:1s. If you want a promotion, you can ask your manager what it takes to get to the next level or toward the destination you have in mind. If there is a career ladder, you can reverse engineer it and figure out what skills you need to develop. Maybe you need to show leadership skills or maybe demonstrate command of a new technology. Get your manager to partner with you on your career growth and they will most likely help you identify opportunities.
Sometimes you will fail
There is a saying, "The best way to avoid making any mistakes is if you don't play the game at all."
In my journey, I preferred to fail fast but also learn fast. If you are going on an accelerated growth path you will most likely make mistakes. The faster the growth the more mistakes will happen but the most important thing is how will you respond: do you learn from them and try again and again, every time getting better or do you choose to stop playing?
Disclaimer: The views presented are my own and can't be attributed to any past and current employers.
Daniel Rizea is a director of engineering at Google who writes about management and leadership in tech. He is a technology enthusiast and former startup founder.