- Sai Chiligireddy has worked with almost a dozen managers in Amazon.
- The engineering manager once fought with his performance appraisal after working under three managers.
- He advises documenting achievements and preparing for meetings to create confidence quickly.
This essay as strong is based on a conversation with Sai Chiligireddy, an engineering manager at Amazon’s Seattle’s office. Hasten edited for length and clarity. Business Insider has verified its employment history.
Amazon was one of my first jobs outside the college, and I went down it in 2017 after a year of work at Juniper Networks.
In the last seven years, I have worked with 11 managers – partly because of my chiefs who change teams and companies, but also because I asked to move teams when I stopped seeing opportunities or when I realized that my performance reactions were unclear.
Twice the first, I was worried about how many frequent manager changes would affect my career growth, and the type of projects I would get. But it became better during later switches when I learned to communicate my goals better.
Here are four actions I have taken To ensure that my transitions between managers were calm and helped me gain their trust. These indicators helped me go out and grow quickly.
1. Possess your career
I have always approached my career with the mind that I am responsible for him and my manager is a facilitator. This mental way ensures that I am communicating before I am asked to seek and seek guidance from people beyond my close manager.
I have a habit of spending about two Hours every month to reach many managers in Amazon to ask how they grow up in their careers and impress how I could do things differently.
2. Document everything
I keep a sheet of boasting a register of all my achievements and summaries of all the projects I have worked for, including reactions from my previous managers and team leaders and any interested party. I set 30 to 45 minutes aside each week or two weeks to make sure I miss nothing.
There is a lot of mobility in technology. If the people you worked with last year rest, no one should guarantee for your work. My performance appreciation suffered once when I worked under three managers who all had different perceptions of what I have worked, and I did not take any active step to correct it.
I share this document with all my new managers so that they can have my record in hand and have context in all my current projects.
3. Prepare for one-in-one
When I first started my career, I have received one-in-one meetings with my managers. I got very few of these meetings.
I began to take the initiative to establish an introductory conversation with all my new managers, where my short and long -term goals. I also shared the Brag document I keep in this call to give them a summary of where I am with my career and what my current projects are.
After this first meeting, I moved on to another format for the rest of our sessions. I borrowed from a book called “The Art of Meeting with Your Manager” and broke my meetings in six sections. I tear this according to different managers and their preferences.
- Ice -breaker: To relieve in conversation.
- Employee Section: I share the latest contributions that my manager may not have in their radar, the challenges I have faced and updates on the discussions I have had with others on my team.
- Manager section: I proactively seek feedback.
- Development and Growth: We discuss where I currently stay and brain storm ideas and projects to make sure I am filling those gaps to meet the criteria for the next level of employees.
- Approximate Advantages: We discuss what to work for immediately.
- Action Items: My manager and I both observe our action items for the next meeting and the conveyance of each action items from the previous meeting.
4. Share and conquer
As I grew up in my career, I began to take on more leadership responsibilities. I started supporting new engineers on my team through one-in-one and putting slow channels where they can seek help.
Cooperation with other teams eventually changed. My manager and I separated and occupied. I would take ownership of five to six teams and my manager would deal with three to four.
I began to try to see myself as a support system for my manager instead of someone who just worked under them.