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Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers

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Re: Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers

#171

Post by thewanisdown »

vi-mode wrote: post #158
thewanisdown wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be taking something about this thread very personally. I'm sorry for that. I hope you have a good day.

You think so? I just disagreed with the things you wrote because I think some of your statements are wrong and/or mislead and they're altogether also inconsistent.

I don't believe they are inconsistent, but I also have the advantage of knowing my own life intimately. I suppose the context makes a difference.

There are very few "rules" in this game, so feel free to manage differently. You have 100+ on your team, so I'm sure your methods worked well for you, as mine have for me.

Re: Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers

#172

Post by asdf21 »

winrid wrote: post #93
JimboOmega wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who cares that much about the salary when you are that point in the Software Engineeering career track in SV anyway? What, really, is the difference between making $300K/yr and even fully doubling that to $600K? A nicer apartment, a nicer car, an earlier retirement? These are pretty marginal things if the cost is spending most of your time doing something you don't like. The most common reason somebody becomes an EM…

Hah, 300k. Made half that building and then leading teams for products that made many millions in ARR. Man I'll never get over how good of a deal they got.

How much do you make now?

Re: Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers

#174

Post by mixmastamyk »

JimboOmega wrote: post #120
mixmastamyk wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first thing is to step up and become the lead developer on your team. If you’re not being proactive folks won’t imagine it on their own. Clothes are another angle. If you look and act like a leader, soon you shall be one.

Well I am a woman, so there is that image problem automatically. You're right about the other bit, though. Even as the most knowledgeable and senior person on the team, I do have something of a habit of letting people who are loud derail me from my ideas (or simply talk over me), which can damage perceptions. It's a thing I try to fight every day, though.

I’ve seen a few women directors/VPs of engineering, they do exist. And folks are quite used to woman managers.

I tend to get talked over as well, but it’s a slightly different subject. To clarify I mean that you solve problems without being asked. As they say about actions and words.

Re: Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers

#175

Post by theflyinghorse »

supernova87a wrote: post #67
brianmcc wrote: post #32

If anyone is considering moving into engineering management, you'd do well to look not just at the how but the why . If it's for status/salary rather than the change in nature of the work be very careful about making the move. You need to really want to manage and develop people (with all the idiosyncracies that real human beings come with!), and to communicate, co-ordinate, and delegate for a living. Some will love…

Yes, junior people frequently make the incorrect assumption that entering management is a promotion (partly because we have made the mistake of unthinkingly treating/rewarding it as such). They are often incentivized to seek management roles as part of a "this must be my career path" because of the associated salary. It is a different role, and not merely a coder who tells people what to do. It has a different skill…

To quote a discussion on HR from a while back (can't find the actual link in my history) - "My manager can fire me but I can't fire my manager". Manager is a promotion if only based on power dynamics.

Re: Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers

#176

Post by com2kid »

vi-mode wrote: post #168
com2kid wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is the biggest misconception most have you have never led seriously. As a manager, I managed my team, and dealt with a lot of other teams! I was spending a good % of my time coordinating, organizing, and paving the way for my team to do good work. Ranging from ensuring the UI specs that got to them had been well vetted, to negotiating release schedules with other teams. This extends even to engineering decisio…

Tbh, this sounds you like are heavily micromanaging your people because you don't have any task yourself. Did you ever got into 360 feedback? How was the outcome?

I wasn't micro-managing my people, I was managing interactions with other teams.

For reference, we had software running on the cloud, mobile, and devices, with multiple teams at each tier.

API changes were a mess of coordination. It wasn't "send JSON" it was "round trip this in a way that can be consumed by a device with 256KB of RAM." Multiple transforms of data across multiple mobile platforms meant just locking down on field orders could be problematic if someone didn't take proper notes[1], or if a Java programmer on Android didn't understand how to properly consume an unsigned 8bit int.

Early on in the project, we had a design team that hadn't yet been trained on what 96mhz CPU could do in terms of UI. I was doing careful reviews of UI designs, and eventually was just sitting in design meetings, to ensure that by the time specs got to my team the spec was physically doable.

Another example, when it comes to performance. I was going over EE schematics to ensure there was sufficient bandwidth to push pixels how the UX team wanted. Part of my job was working as a go-between for EE and UX and explaining the other teams POV to people with very different backgrounds.

Then there is the more soft-skill stuff. Seeing months ahead of time that another team would be having problems in the future, and suggesting to one of my senior engineers that making some friends over there and getting up to speed on their code base ahead of time might be useful, so that in a few months when help is asked for he can jump in and assist.

Letting senior management down gently that their favorite feature is going to be cut.

Prioritizing what features we need to implement to show "progress" to upper management so that we can all stay employed. This often required guessing far ahead of time what we'd eventually be told to demo "next week", and having work start on it way ahead of time. These were very much "do or die" demos.

The feature work? The team sat in a pod and discussed technical implementations with each other. I trusted the people I had hired to do good work, that is why I had hired them. I had the huge benefit of having personally hired every member on the team, which is one of the things that made any of the above possible.

Then there is the actual team management stuff. Inviting engineers to the right meeting so that they had visibility, giving them a chance to speak up in front of senior leadership so that their name was known. Taking someone who I saw leadership potential in and helping them see it, and giving them opportunities to grow that potential.

Rotating user facing features around between engineers so that they all had something they could point to and say "I made that shiny thing!" Good for both morale and career visibility.

Preventing burn-out. Telling PMs that work was going to be delayed because the engineer best suited to doing it was going to be working 6 hour days on light duty because they just went through a 2 month crunch.

Ensuring senior leadership heard the name of the engineer(s) responsible when something went right, and only heard my name if something went wrong.

Managing is a lot of work, but I think your judgements about it are unfair. Managing engineering projects is a blend of technical and people skills, and there is no law of the universe that says someone can't enjoy both.

[1] Or ignored the spec sent out. Or wasn't aware there was a spec. Or we were told we had to have this working in a matter of days so there was no spec. Or there was a bug in the deserializer that ended up swapping two fields. That last one took awhile to figure out.

Re: Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers

#177

Post by volkk »

tra3 wrote: post #169
volkk wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Realistically speaking though, manager is an upwards trajectory in the CS world. Most companies don't define the IC track well, and a staff engineer is usually a 10 year veteran whereas a manager path, even if you hate it with a passion is a quick way to get a really high salary with low years of experience. Even more salary once you become director and that's not out of the realm of normal with 5-7 years of exp. I k…

I agree with the overall point you're making. > Clearly, the way to more money in the long run is the manager path even if you find it horrible. Gotta break this down. How much more money would one need to make justify having a shitty time 40+ hours a week?

Everyone's got their own numbers, I'm sure. But if you don't want to be sitting and coding at the age of 50 with 20 year olds around you "changing the world" for yet another VC startup that will fold in 4 years, your best bet is to make as much money as you possibly can as fast as you can and with some smart decisions attempt to retire in your 40s aka the FIRE thing that is popular these days. Misery is subjective but it's the smart thing to do if you want the highest probability of doing whatever you want to do later

Re: Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers

#178

Post by derekja »

takiavosky wrote: post #173

Man you have a PhD. Is this book worth reading for someone who just have basic education?

I have a PhD. The piece of paper hangs in my bathroom so I can look at it while I shit. It was a personally fulfilling experience that taught me a lot about academic research and and is almost completely divorced from the practice of software engineering management. (and most other things.. I'd suggest never being intimidated by a PhD.) The book is written on a very approachable level, I'm enjoying it so far.

Re: Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers

#179

Post by JimboOmega »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #174
JimboOmega wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I am a woman, so there is that image problem automatically. You're right about the other bit, though. Even as the most knowledgeable and senior person on the team, I do have something of a habit of letting people who are loud derail me from my ideas (or simply talk over me), which can damage perceptions. It's a thing I try to fight every day, though.

I’ve seen a few women directors/VPs of engineering, they do exist. And folks are quite used to woman managers. I tend to get talked over as well, but it’s a slightly different subject. To clarify I mean that you solve problems without being asked. As they say about actions and words.

I do have a tendency to be unconfident, to ask permission, be deferential, wait for somebody to tell me to do the thing, etc, when I could just do the thing. I tend to assume what I was going to do was wrong, especially if I get any pushback. In part because what I suggest has historically automatically been dismissed, my work and effort downplayed, etc... that doesn't seem to be a problem at my current org but I'm somewhat conditioned to assume that's the feedback I'll get anyway.

Incidentally I've never seen any of those things. At most of the smaller companies I've been at I've been the most senior woman simply as a senior engineer. Reporting to a woman sounds fantastical. I know it happens; I know a couple of female EMs at my current (bigger) company. I've essentially never had a woman in my reporting chain outside who is in the engineering org. (Across 7 jobs and about 15 years of career).

I tend to dress the part anyway and have had interview candidates assume I was the manager and my EM was the IC, but it hasn't been helpful outside of that. At worst, it can cause people to assume I'm non-technical, so it's a dangerous game to play.

Re: Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers

#180

Post by plutonorm »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #113
JimboOmega wrote: post #73

Does the book cover how to get the position in the first place? I've read countless books (Like "The Managers Path" and "Managing Humans"), blog articles, etc, and tried many strategies, but it never seems to happen. Usually for the catch-22 reason of not having managing experience. I've even had past managers they had no worries about me having the skills or knowledge to do it... but it still doesn't happen.

The first thing is to step up and become the lead developer on your team. If you’re not being proactive folks won’t imagine it on their own. Clothes are another angle. If you look and act like a leader, soon you shall be one.

What if you're not a very good engineer, like me? But would make a good people manager?
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