GROWING YOUR CAREER 
 WHEN EVERYTHING YOU’VE EVER LEARNED BEFORE 
 NO LONGER WORKS
 
 Kieran Snyder
 CEO, Textio 

Me then TRS-80 expert. ELIZA obsessive. Language inventor. Astronomy nerd. Won the 7th grade science fair with a BASIC supernova simulator! Hitter of one home run. It was the clear highlight of fifth grade. Downhill since. Me now CEO of Textio. Intelligent editor that predicts how documents will perform before they’re published. PhD in Natural Language Processing. Former Microsoft, Amazon. Writer, language nerd, Scrabble hustler, mom, very slow marathoner. My story: Once a language nerd, always a language nerd! 

This is my team. I’ve led small teams and large teams, at big companies and startups. This team has the hardest job. 

You then Highly productive, creative, and accomplished engineer. You wrote the best code, solved the best problems, were the best to work with. So good someone wanted you to lead other engineers! You now Highly productive, creative, and accomplished engineer who can’t find any time to do “real work.” You still write the best code but don’t get to start it until 9pm. You can’t understand why your team isn’t moving faster. You could have it all done tomorrow! Your story: From awesome engineer to manager with no time 

What your day looks like You were the expert 
 in your area You showed up and left whenever you wanted BEFORE You try to be the expert 
 in all areas You show up first 
 and leave last WHERE YOU ARE You can go deep at a moment’s notice You’re around when it makes sense for your team WHERE YOU COULD BE 

How you relate You mentored coworkers You were frustrated by coworkers BEFORE You mentor your team You are sometimes frustrated with your team WHERE YOU ARE You lead your team 
 and mentor others You manage your team 
 and back them up WHERE YOU COULD BE 

Where you shine Do the work Take on work items BEFORE Do more of the work Prioritize work items WHERE YOU ARE Align the work Spot the gaps that 
 need work items WHERE YOU COULD BE 

Three things you should know about everyone on your team What they do better than other engineers Where they find their happy place What stress looks like 

What they do better than other engineers ”Melissa stays calm in a crisis” “Zeke learns a new codebase faster than anyone else” “Laura can get to 90% on any new problem in a few hours” “Joe has exceptional UI instincts” “River’s code never causes regressions” 

Where they find their happy place ”Melissa gets more done when she works at home” “Zeke likes to brainstorm when he’s stuck” “Laura prefers to think about a problem before talking about it” “Joe and I have better conversations when we meet over lunch” “River gets energy from customer feedback” 

What stress looks like ”Melissa stops making progress” “Zeke comes into work later” “Laura focuses on lower priority tasks” “Joe talks less in team discussions” “River spends too much time on code review feedback” 

Writing billing infrastructure
 Editing patent docs
 On livesite duty 
 Building tooltip framework
 Unit tests
 Prioritizing editor bugs
 Shipping customer mail system
 Perf bugs Customer data analysis
 BI visualization improvements 

Your game plan Answer the three questions, for everyone on your team Play your IC chips thoughtfully Align work across your team, every single week Succeed and profit! 

[email protected] textio.com @textio words + data = magic