Projects Aren't Pets; They're Cattle

Stop having pet projects; that’s a Staff Engineer’s domain. For a manager, every project is cattle: it needs to be completed, automated, delegated, or cancelled.

Jampa Uchoa - Lessons Learned After 10 Years as an Engineering Manager

I’ve been wrestling with this lately. Standing up a new project, the instinct is to treat it like a pet—wear all the hats, understand every contour. But that founder-to-manager transition needs to happen fast. Pet projects are seductive because they feel like yours; treating them as cattle keeps you from becoming the bottleneck.