Managers and management

A manager at PostHog has a short list of responsibilities:

1. Setting the right context for your direct reports to do their jobs
2. Making sure your direct reports are happy and productive
3. Acting as the hiring manager for new roles in your team
4. Creating good plans for new person onboarding and small team offsites

That's it.

A manager at PostHog is not responsible for:

1. Deciding compensation - we have a compensation calculator and the process is managed by the exec team
2. Setting tasks for your direct reports - that is not how small teams work
3. Providing a career progression plan for your team
4. Figuring out team structure - today that is all handled by the exec team
5. "Approving," whether that's projects, expenses, days off, or accounts - people should have admin access by default to most things
6. Dealing with HR issues - you should escalate these to Fraser or Charles
7. Anything legal-related, e.g. someone wants to quit or thinks they did something illegal - route this to the exec team
8. Deciding to hire or fire people - the exec team do this

This guidance applies to all teams, irrespective of whether you manage an engineering or non-engineering team.

Part-time managers

Because of the relatively short list of tasks that managers have, management at PostHog is a part-time job. That means everyone, including the founders, still spend the majority of their time on practising what they do best - for most managers, this isn't actually management!

As an engineer, you wouldn't respect the opinion of someone who can't code on a coding-specific question. As a designer, you really want your manager to have an eye for design. As an operator, you want to be managed by someone who has scaled a business. That's why it's important for managers to keep practising their craft.

However, management tasks do come first, as giving context to your team tends to have a multiplying effect vs. getting one more PR out. After that though, it's back to work.

You'll sometimes hear us use the term "team lead". A team lead is the leader of a small team. By default they also manage the individuals that are part of their team, though very occasionally they don't, such as when a new small team has just been created.

How do I set context?

At PostHog, we hire highly experienced people for 99% of roles. That means managers won't need to spend time telling their direct reports what to do.

However, for those people to make the best decisions, they need context. The things a manager can do to set context include:

• Creating a roadmap that the team can work towards
• Helping someone figure out who else to talk to within PostHog
• Enabling or encouraging the team to measure their impact
• Improving the process in which a team works (things like standups, reviews etc.)
• Organizing a team offsite or other meetup to work in person

Pitfalls to avoid

The biggest difference between PostHog and other places is that in the end it is up to the individual to make the decisions. All you can do as a manager is set context. From there, you'll have to trust that we've made the right hiring decisions and that the individual is able to execute on that. If they can't, we have a generous severance policy.

Decisions aren't just about buying a piece of software or choosing a color for a button. It's also about what to work on, what to invest time in, or where to take entire parts of our product.

As a manager, it's tempting to see yourself as the sole owner of all the information, and give it out sparingly. People will come to you often with questions (because they don't have the context) and when they do you'll get more validation that holding all the context yourself makes you an Important Person. What managers should aim for at PostHog is to make themselves obsolete. Share as much context as possible, in written form and in a public channel. That way everyone will be able to do their best work.

Ways to burn yourself out:

• Become the sole point of communication between your team and others. Instead, connect the right people together directly.
• Take sole responsibility for writing up the detailed plan for your team. Instead, set the vision/roadmap, then encourage your team to contribute objectives too.
• Move from IC to manager and just add the management on top of your existing work. Instead, you should cut your IC work down slightly to make room.
• Be the only person on your team who talks to customers. Instead, encourage everyone to do this - this starts at onboarding!

How do I make sure my direct reports are happy and productive?

First, make sure you are setting the right context. Next, the most useful thing you can do here is to schedule regular 1:1s. There are three types that we've found useful:

• First 1-1 when a team member starts
• Weekly 1-1s as a regular check in
• Bi-annual 1-1s to talk about longer term career plans (make sure you put these in the calendar!)

Talking about long-term career plans every now and again is also important but easy to let slip when things get busy. If you can help people achieve long term plans while hitting PostHog's short term needs - whether at PostHog or not - you'll get people's best work!

We have a set of handy templates to use - feel free to adapt these for each team member. These are not to be followed strictly if you don't want to - this is to just save you having to create something from scratch.

The keeper test

As PostHog grows, it's increasingly important that all team leads help us keep the bar for performance high - we can't centralize this with the founders. To help us scale this, the relevant exec team member will regularly check in with their respective team leads to do a keeper test on their team members throughout the year:

1. Ask the team lead 'if X was leaving for a similar role at another company, would you try to keep them?'
2. Dig in where the answer is 'no' - what would it take for this to be a 'yes'? Is this just temporary, or is there a deeper issue to resolve?
3. Make sure the manager is sharing all of this feedback with their team to help them improve.

Side note: anyone can ask their manager 'how hard would you work to change my mind if I were thinking of leaving?'. It's a great way to solicit valuable feedback!

What does being a hiring manager entail?

Two things:

• You will conduct the technical interview by default. You'll also kick off the SuperDay with candidates, and be their main point of contact in Slack. Please help us keep hiring moving by giving feedback quickly!
• If you think your team needs someone, make a new hire request. The exec and people team are generally on top of hiring for all teams, but this is a good approach if you think something has been missed. You'll also be asked to do one of these anyway if we're hiring for a new type of role.

See the #technical-interviewers channel for more info here.

Ongoing support for managers

Charles has 1-1s every 6 weeks with all managers. These meetings are totally optional, and are designed to be a place for you to discuss any management-y related things that are on your mind. In your first session, he'll work with you to figure out a structure. We've found this works better than trying to cover management topics in 1-1s with James and Tim, as those are better used for product and strategy-type work instead.

You don't have to wait 6 weeks to bring up any management issues - you can message Charles any time on Slack.

We also run a monthly, totally optional discussion group for managers, which Charles leads. We follow the same agenda each time:

• Go around and give an update on how the last month has been for your team, plus any particular challenge you'd like to discuss. You don't always have to bring a discussion topic. - 10min
• Group selects 1 or 2 challenges to discuss in depth. Usually you'll find there will be a topic applicable to multiple people.
• Roundtable coaching - 45min

Rules:

• Assume everything is confidential by default - if you want to raise something outside of the meeting, get permission from the relevant person first. For this reason, we don't take notes - take your own personal notes if you want to remember something.
• Make sure everyone gets a chance to speak. If we talked about your topic last time, consider not raising one this time.
• The session is about helping you to be a better manager - if you want to solve company-wide/cross-functional problems, there will likely be a better venue for this, e.g. an Issue, Slack, or tech leads meeting.

Recommended reading

These have been recommended by multiple managers on the team:

• The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You by Julie Zhuo (great for first time managers)
• High Growth Handbook by Elad Gil (covers a lot of ground beyond management)

Engineering-specific:

• The Manager's Path by Camille Fournier
• An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management by Will Larson