Two weeks ago I started a new job as VP Engineering at Recruitics . It's a great opportunity. The company is growing quickly and has a solid management team. This role is quite different from my last one as a software architect. Now I am designing people stuff, not software. I have read nearly twenty books to prepare for this role. One recurring theme from my reading is that people fail in new roles when they keep doing the things that made them successful in their previous role: the key to success is adapting to the new challenges. My background is in writing solid software systems, but the challenges I face now are different from the ones that brought me to this point. Resisting the urge to jump to coding is difficult. But code doesn't hire a great team, and code doesn't improve communication. I need to do it differently now, and I'm embracing the change.