Football's monster man as staff-level IC

Issue 157: How a strong side safety in football scales impact

Last week, I wrote my favorite books on leadership. Within the top five is Bill Walsh’s , "The Score Takes Care of Itself." Perhaps I’m still carrying the momentum of thought into this week. It’s also preseason for American Football in the NFL; a time that marks the Autumn season is upon us. As mentioned in last week’s issue, football is a sport in which tactics and strategies resemble warfare than other sports—gaining territory, offense/defense, and strategy.

Am I telling you that tech companies and software teams operate and organize like that football teams? 100%. Just like there are parallels between the arcs of recruiting and dating (please separate them), the same is true for tech companies and football. In the game of basketball, one talented individual can take over a game and score 81 points—carrying their team to victory. In football, the subteams of offense, defense, and special teams all need to do their job well in order to win. The defense can keep you in the game, but if the offense delivers points, you lose. An offense can march downfield in 30 seconds to put you in a winning situation, but if the kicker misses, you' lose.

I could write an entire newsletter about tech companies as football. However, I’ll focus this week on a specific parallel—the role of the monster man in a 5-2 defense and how resembles that of a staff-level IC. In my career conversations with people, the two common topics that come up. The first is making the transition from individual contributor to manager. The second is for those who do not want to be a manager, it is to understand the path beyond a senior-level role. Titles vary as much as superheroes in a multiverse saga. For the purpose of this, I’ll refer to the “beyond senior” role as staff. I’ll take a crack at standardizing: Associate, Mid-level, Senior, Staff, Principal, , and Distinguished. The assumption is these levels also depend on scale. Being a Distinguished Engineer in a startup of five people has the same irrelevant meaning as being a VP of Design for a startup when you’re the only designer, or as I like to call it, VP of Me.

Most people stay in the senior role for their entire careers. This is important to call out because many people feel stuck in senior-level purgatory. However, there are many people who do not want the responsibilities of the subsequent roles and love doing great work and contributing. What it means for those who do move to the next level is a lot of responsibility and accountability. The staff-level role at the core influences, schemes, and elevates outcomes—both directly and indirectly. The common thought is this would be the quarterback, but it looks more like a role on the defensive side on a particular scheme—the monster man in a 5-2 Defense.

52 Monster

Before I go into details of the monster man you need to understand a bit about football defenses. The defense of football consists of 11 people with three subsets: defensive line, linebackers, and secondary.

The scheme in which a defense run varies based on its philosophy or certain levels. For example, high school and college football have a very diverse amount of schemes, whereas the NFL sticks to more "pro-style schemes." The type of defense names are based on the number of people on the line and linebackers. The remainder is what represents the secondary. For example, a 4-3 defense means four defensive linemen and three linebackers. A 3-4 has three defensive linemen and three linebackers. You can only have a maximum of five people on the line, so you can't run an 8-2 defense.

When I played football, our high school ran a 5-2 defense. If you heard “52 Monster,” it means the strong safety was designated as the monster man. They line up on the side of the field where there are more players on the opposition lined up, hence, the strong side.

The monster man is lined up on the side with more skill players on the offense, anticipating the ball being moved on the strong side.

The defense should be focused on block destruction, alignment, gap control, and tackling. Having a strong safety on this side allows the defense to adjust. If the offense shifts to the other side, the strong safety can follow and adjust without re-shifting the entire defense. As a result, other players on defense look to what the monster man is doing to make adjustments themselves, or directed by the monster man. Similar to the staff-level IC, the monster man influences, schemes, and elevates outcomes—both directly and indirectly.

To be abundantly clear, every person on a team has the ability to lead and influence. It doesn’t take a certain career level to start doing it. The fact that you lead and influence throughout your career progression is likely the reason you made it to the staff anyway. However, we must acknowledge certain roles have more direct influence than others. A manager has a direct influence on hiring and firing. She makes the final call. The monster man can call for adjustments based on what's seen on the field, similar to a quarterback making an audible or calling their own plays.

With indirect influence, you may not make the final call, but the way you execute informs other people. This is people witnessing your greatness. It elevates how other people think about their work and they learn through osmosis. This might be how the monster man shows up to practice or how you approach code review. The level at which you do things has your peers aspiring to operate at a higher level.

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The responsibility of influence

When people think about influence and leadership, it's often associated with having the authority and view of being able to make decisions. There is a lot of perceived glory that can come with it. As Aunt May (played by Marisa Tomei) said in Spider-Man: No Way Home, "With great power, comes great responsibility." Power and influence can lead to glory, but also consequences. Depending on the adjustments and decisions the monster man makes, it could lead to breaking the offense and making a huge play, or a wrong move that results in the opposition scoring. Your bad decisions are not only yours to own but can affect the entire team.

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Your teams need monsters

When Kevin Grennan (KG) joined Webflow’s design team, I knew he was the monster man on our team. KG was a long-time staff designer at companies such as Lyft, Airbnb, Google, and many others. Within the first few weeks of joining, KG identified core problems across the company and team, then devised a plan comprising what he would take on directly and the other needs of the team. In the next months, he led the consolidation of our UI patterns to formulate a usable design system, then helped recruit and hire designers to execute. If you’ve worked with KG, you’ll know he’s very soft-spoken verbally, but his actions are what speak the loudest.

Like the staff-level team member, the monster man influences, schemes, and elevates outcomes—both directly and indirectly.

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Hype links

Collection of what I read and related to this week's post

• Printernet →Really cool experiment to print out your favorite papers and read.

• (10) Replit - A 3X YC Reject to a $1.7Bn Startup

• The State of VC Investing in Data & AI Startups — The Information

• ChatGPT and A.I. do not appear to have taken many jobs. Here’s why.

• The Secret Power of ‘Read It Later’ Apps

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Job opportunities

We're hiring at Replit and the Proof of Concept Pallet board

• Ro is hiring a SVP of Product Design

• Hummingbird is hiring a Product Designer

• Forma is hiring a Lead Product Designer

• Elevate Labs is hiring a Head of Product

• Basis is hiring a Marketing Designer

• Remix (by Via) is hiring a Senior Product Designer

• Stripe is hiring a Creative Director, Campaigns