Ask HN: How to prepare for an Engineering Manager interview?

There are already some great suggestions on here, but I love this topic so here are mine.

For the interview, come up with an answer to this: Tell me about a time you leveraged your experience and knowledge to multiply the efforts of your team.

A lot of what you will be doing is spending your time helping your team do good work on the right things, so any experience you have where you have done that as a senior or lead is relevant.

When you become a manager:

1. Find a mentor

2. https://www.manager-tools.com/get-started - Some really good fundamentals in podcast form. You can listen on your commute(if you have one)

3. http://randsinrepose.com/archives/category/management/ - Articles on management from an engineering manager.

I would pick one article and one podcast to consume each week so you have time to actually absorb it. If you try to implement some kind of perfect program from the beginning you will likely fail.

One of the things you should think about in your interview is how you're planning on interviewing them to make sure they're the right fit for your first managerial role. Managing a team, even for those who have been tech leads or in some leadership position without management responsibilities, is a very different role than being an individual contributor. You should think about this the same way you might if you were coming in as a Junior SE, or pivoting into a different specialty within the profession.

So, a few things I would think about would be:

[1] Who will you report to, and what is their management experience? How do their direct reports (likely other managers) view their management skills? Are they a teacher, or do they expect you to "pick things up" on your own? If they expect you to pick things up on your own, will they work with you and potentially pay for training classes or professional coaching?

[2] What is the structure of the team? Is it mostly senior members, or mostly junior members? What are their expectations of a new manager? Does the company typically promote from within, and you'll be an abnormal outsider?

[3] What are the expectations around the management responsibility, beyond day to day team issues? Will they be expecting you to hire new employees? Do you need to handle raises, promotions, and firing? Will you be expected to put together a budget every year?

All of the above is meant to help you to assess whether the role is going to be one that you can be successful in. Management is a great job, and I loved helping my teams grow in their careers; however, I think I would have floundered had I not had a great mentor who helped coach me specifically in these skills. I also think I would have struggled mightily had I jumped into a management role, without prior management experience, with a new team and a new company. Managing a team as an outsider is one of the toughest new roles in a company, even if you have a ton of experience.

Quick shameless plug: I'm co-founder of a venture-backed startup focused on helping people grow in their careers, such as yourself. My email is in my profile if you have any questions and I can be of help to you.

I would agree that I wouldn't typically hire a manager from outside my company if they have no previous time in that role, mostly because ramping up on all of the internal company structure, technology and processes is enough to keep people quite busy without having to learn how to be a people manager.

That being said, I feel the opposite about internal hires. One of the great joys of being a manager is coaching and mentoring the next generation of managers and having a healthy pipeline of candidates serves your company well.

Sadly, I have not bridged that gap (YET!). In the past I've made lateral transitions into product management and project management, but these roles, like "engineer" are individual contributor roles and have similar career limitations.

I've never hired for an engineering manager before, but it just popped up on our OKR this quarter. I think what I'd be interested in knowing about someone's management background:

- tell me about a time you had to let someone go. How did you deliver the news? How did the other person react? How did you communicate it to the engineering team and broader organization? Was there any fallout, and if so, how did you help people through the transition?

- tell me about a time you had to deal with layoffs. How did you communicate it to your team?

- tell me about a time you helped level an engineer up or multiplied their productivity. How did you give them feedback? What was the most difficult conversation you had with them? How did you help them reach the next level?

- tell me about your own progression from an IC to a manager. What was the most difficult feedback you've ever received from a teammate? How did you act on that? How did you react to the feedback?

- tell me about a time you had to say no to an engineer asking for a raise or promotion. How did they react? Did you setup a long term plan? Did they leave or stick around? What did you ask them to do?