Junior Military Officer (JMO) Transition into Tech

Background

This post was motivated by a LinkedIn message from a junior combat arms officer asking for advice on how to land a “managerial” role at a big tech firm. Here’s a brain dump of my reaction. I could also be writing this to myself four years ago.

I’m writing this four years after leaving the service. I ETSed as an O3 in the Army after Company Command. Since then, I worked at as a data scientist, a technical program manager, and a security researcher (all “individual contributor” roles). I have never worked as a manager in a tech company, but I’ve seen plenty and feel qualified to talk about their hiring, roles, and responsibilities.

Thoughts

Why do you want to be a manager? Have a good answer for that question. Bad answers include flavors of “it’s what I’ve done” and “I’ve always enjoyed leadership.”

Military officer training does very little to prepare individuals to successfully navigate tech management. In the military, we often hear about differences between “management” and “leadership” with an emphasis on developing skills in the latter. While leadership skills will serve you well in any future position, they aren’t 1) how you’ll get hired as a tech manager, 2) how you’ll be assessed as a tech manager, or 3) how you’ll be expected to serve your team as a tech manager.

Military officers are put in charge of a group of individuals and must possess the skills and abilities to plan a mission and convince those individuals to execute that mission. Tech managers are hired to build, retain, and optimize a team. They may have some role in strategy and execution, but those are not their primary role (particularly at the junior management levels). The best managers I have worked with can coach/mentor subordinates, but they do not allow themselves to potentially block execution. They know that they could be pulled away for days to deal with HR/legal or need to be on interviews, getting you promoted, or advocating across the organization. Management at tech companies is a specific skillset, just like programming.

With that in mind, think forward to the interview process. Tech manager interviews are about times you’ve built teams, improved processes, or dealt with difficult HR situations… things that very few JMOs get to deal with. Your anecdote about Article 15ing someone for a some alcohol-related shenanigans isn’t going to land well. You’ve probably never had opportunities to recruit your own team, retain someone when they had a competing job offer, or advocate for a subordinates’ promotion – at least not in ways that are relatable to your civilian interviewer. Your resume will say that you’ve been accountable for millions of dollars of property, but you haven’t really forecasted and managed a discretionary budget. What’s the difference in performance you should expect from an Engineer and a Senior Engineer? You don’t have that calibration. You’ve done counseling and have onboarded new employees – I’m not saying you’re entirely without relevant experience, but it’s certainly an uphill battle compared to civilian peers.

You have plenty of transferable skills, but broaden your aperture beyond “managerial roles.” The most successful individual contributors have your skills: organization, communication, distillation, and problem decomposition. Before putting yourself in a situation where you assume responsibility for building and optimizing an organization, try stepping into a role where you can just learn about how one functions in the private sector.

If you feel yourself thinking “but I don’t have the skills to pass a coding interview, my real strength is leadership,” that might be a problem. You may find it very difficult to build, mentor, and advocate for a team when you lack the fundamental experience and skills to skim the surface of their job. Can every tech manager code? Certainly not, but most of them have years and demonstrated performance navigating tech organizations. They’ve picked up the right level of domain understanding through experience or osmosis. I’ll put it bluntly: I wouldn’t want to be managed by someone who was a promote-ahead-of-peers combat arms leader without domain knowledge and I don’t think self-aware leaders want to put themselves in that position. We’re not charging the hill, we’re scooping bits and bytes into freight trains. More than someone to lead the charge, we need someone to make sure we’re mining the right stuff, have shovels, and that the cars leave on time.

Conclusion

Does this mean that officers shouldn’t try to be managers at tech companies? Not necessarily. You may find that your passion for coaching and personnel talent management make tech manager roles a great fit for you. However, I don’t think it’s where most transitioning JMOs should set their sights for their first job – you don’t have the perspective to know if you’ll enjoy it, it’ll be tough to successfully navigate interviews, and you might not have the KSAs to really serve your team. That last one is what you’re thinking about as an officer, right? Servant leadership? Here’s a chance to demonstrate leadership without management. Pick up a shovel first.

Project/Program Manager is a great transition role. You’ll get to manage execution with a focus on the mission, but are rarely a blocker and are rarely distracted with “managerial” things.

Postscript

Obviously this doesn’t apply to everyone and just represents my short set of experiences. Do what makes you happy and supports your family. I wrote this as if the military was your only source of knowledge and experience (as it was for me). If that’s not the case for you, you probably don’t need this post.