Early in my career, I changed jobs almost every year. Looking back, the reason was simple: the moment I stopped growing, I left. Now I'm on the other side as a manager, and I want to avoid this happening in my team.
My team has more projects than time. And I said yes to one more: building a completely new tool for a real use case in production, from frontend to backend. We had built MVPs and small tools before. Nothing on this scale.
On paper, it was the wrong time. But when I brought it to the team, I saw the motivation. Some offered to put in extra effort. Others offered to take over running tasks so their colleagues could focus on building.
Routine work keeps the lights on. But if that's all someone does for too long, growth can stall.
The project is still in progress, and it isn't free. We had to deliberately create capacity, and some people are carrying extra weight while we do it.
But it also reminded me of something I experienced early in my own career: Sometimes people don't need a new job. They need a new challenge. And as a manager, part of my job is to create the space for that challenge.
I am curious what makes you in your career think about leaving?
This is part of my "100 Days of Year One" series. Follow along as I share what I've learned in my first year as Head of Data and Cloud.