Ask HN: Developers who became engineering managers, how was the experience? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Developers who became engineering managers, how was the experience?

#31

Post by clevergadget » Fri, Oct 13, 2017, 12:32 PM UTC

wruza wrote: post #29

ninegunpi wrote: post #6

Answer from a different side of the fence: As an executive who elected senior engineers into engineering managers three time in different companies, there are three challenging areas for even the most fit for the job engineers: - understanding that soft skills and understanding company politics now matter not as much, but more than detailed technical skills. focusing on eliminating weaknesses in this area is that par…

I’ve read first two -points about four times, but still have no idea what these are about (usual thing when talking to completely “other side of fence” minded people). Can I ask for some examples in context?

yeah I think it is a suggestion to immediately fire the weakest co-worker when you get promoted? great morale advice for the rest of the culture <3

Re: Ask HN: Developers who became engineering managers, how was the experience?

#32

Post by mikehollinger » Fri, Oct 13, 2017, 12:45 PM UTC

I’m a senior technical staff member on my team. This means that I occasionally get to write code, spend lots of time debugging integration problems, and (as I see it) matching up people and problems that come in to the team. I don’t have direct reports, but I provide feedback to managers, am a team member, lead my own team, and lead / mentor team leaders of other teams.

Delegation and Motivation are most difficult by far. I can think of several occasions where I’ve said or done something the wrong way, causing friction, heartache and strife. I’be gotten better at recognizing different communication styles and matching the message to the recipient however.

Soft skills are key. Go look at Manager Tools[1], a podcast focused on improving the quality of management in the workforce. Every podcast they’ve ever produced is online, going back to 2005, and covers all of the unspoken stuff like how to communicate effectively, how to have good 1:1’s, how to give feedback, how to handle “steel cage death match” meetings, and even how to handle personal scent issues.

They organize the podcasts into a “map of the universe” and also have a “hall of fame.”

I’d say start with the map of the universe (it has a “start here” which covers a couple of foundational topics, like I mentioned above. Once you’ve gotten a feel for it, search around and find something relevant (eg performance reviews might be a good idea given that we’re in q4).

[1]

Re: Ask HN: Developers who became engineering managers, how was the experience?

#33

Post by ninegunpi » Fri, Oct 13, 2017, 12:45 PM UTC

wruza wrote: post #29

ninegunpi wrote: post #6

Answer from a different side of the fence: As an executive who elected senior engineers into engineering managers three time in different companies, there are three challenging areas for even the most fit for the job engineers: - understanding that soft skills and understanding company politics now matter not as much, but more than detailed technical skills. focusing on eliminating weaknesses in this area is that par…

I’ve read first two -points about four times, but still have no idea what these are about (usual thing when talking to completely “other side of fence” minded people). Can I ask for some examples in context?

Sorry, English is not my primary language, so the grammar constructions might get odd from time to time, this might have been the cause.

Point 1. Good engineer should know how to code, and how to cooperate with fellow engineers well. This means healthy balance of "hard" (engineering) and "soft" (communication) skills. When engineer becomes tech lead or engineering manager, being able to communicate, understand other people's behavior, lead them, communicate situation up and down the chain,- soft skills start to matter way more. If there are serious skill gaps in soft skills (and all ex-engineers have ones when they start to grow in this area), addressing them is more important for engineering manager's career than addressing lack of up-to-date-ness in latest technology.

Point 1, Example: when I first got to manage a small team, me not understanding power distribution between younger and more experienced engineers (I came from latter category) led to mass extinction of juniors: the way important decisions were made (with more contribution from senior engineers) was good for the company, but the way it was presented (We The Elders Made Crucial Decision) pissed youngsters off, made them feel incapable of making valuable contributions and they quickly left. After understanding the reason (which took hours of mentoring from CTO, a very experienced manager), I had to really work hard on creating the atmosphere where, even when the decisions were made by seniors, the ownership and responsibility for actual implementation of these decisions was distributed among the teams and everybody could contribute to mutual success.

Point 2, with examples already: It kinda continues point 1, but bridges from personal scale to team scale. Process is as good as it's bottleneck. Team is as fast/writes as quality code, as it's weakest members. If you tolerate them, they constrain the process. Your goal is to spot weaker people / weaker engineering decisions and put reasonable amount of effort to either make them better or make them live. As an engineering manager (e.g. manager that comes from engineering, not from fancy MBA factory), you actually can tell the slacker from person who wasn't properly integrated into the process. As an engineering manager, you can tell that the decision to make blocking tests stop CI on the first failure is a poor decision and having a proper failure log of all tests is crucial for speed of bug fixes, not fixing them faster or with better method. Basically you are responsible for the failure (even if you're formally not), because you're the focal point of knowledge and power that can prevent them, put slower people to speed, put processes to full power.

Re: Ask HN: Developers who became engineering managers, how was the experience?

#34

Post by mikehollinger » Fri, Oct 13, 2017, 12:45 PM UTC

I’m a senior technical staff member on my team. This means that I occasionally get to write code, spend lots of time debugging integration problems, and (as I see it) matching up people and problems that come in to the team. I don’t have direct reports, but I provide feedback to managers, am a team member, lead my own team, and lead / mentor team leaders of other teams.

Delegation and Motivation are most difficult by far. I can think of several occasions where I’ve said or done something the wrong way, causing friction, heartache and strife. I’be gotten better at recognizing different communication styles and matching the message to the recipient however.

Soft skills are key. Go look at Manager Tools[1], a podcast focused on improving the quality of management in the workforce. Every podcast they’ve ever produced is online, going back to 2005, and covers all of the unspoken stuff like how to communicate effectively, how to have good 1:1’s, how to give feedback, how to handle “steel cage death match” meetings, and even how to handle personal scent issues.

They organize the podcasts into a “map of the universe” and also have a “hall of fame.”

I’d say start with the map of the universe (it has a “start here” which covers a couple of foundational topics, like I mentioned above. Once you’ve gotten a feel for it, search around and find something relevant (eg performance reviews might be a good idea given that we’re in q4).

[1] https://www.manager-tools.com/map-of-the-universe

Re: Ask HN: Developers who became engineering managers, how was the experience?

#35

Post by ninegunpi » Fri, Oct 13, 2017, 12:49 PM UTC

nython wrote: post #17

ninegunpi wrote: post #6

Answer from a different side of the fence: As an executive who elected senior engineers into engineering managers three time in different companies, there are three challenging areas for even the most fit for the job engineers: - understanding that soft skills and understanding company politics now matter not as much, but more than detailed technical skills. focusing on eliminating weaknesses in this area is that par…

Could you give an example for the 'eliminating weaknesses is more important than growing strengths' part? I think I've encountered this before - where letting an incompetent developer go would have accelerated a project much more than hiring a very competent one.

It's true, but real leader is responsible for his people and the team as much as for success. Team has to see that leader puts significant effort into making weaker people become stronger before actually letting them go. This way, healthy mutual respect arises instead of hostility and fear, because letting underperformers go always leads to fear, unhealthy competition, intra-team political games which are just a waste of human time and nerves.

Re: Ask HN: Developers who became engineering managers, how was the experience?

#36

Post by ninegunpi » Fri, Oct 13, 2017, 12:51 PM UTC

elcapitan wrote: post #24

I'm in a role as manager/lead dev, so it's kind of mixed. The transition to the managerial part was pretty rough back then and I wished I had gotten more support, many companies don't know how to do that well. With a developer mindset, what helped me was this (no particular order) * Go about it as a problem solving task. This can be as complex and fun as building a new system - you are building organization and cultu…

>I wished I had gotten more support, many companies don't know how to do that well.

It's literally the biggest leadership failure when non-managers get elected to management positions - failure to coach them by senior managers, and ends to torture for everyone. People don't get to deadlift 500lbs after lifting 20lbs for previous 10 years just because someone decided they can do it.

Re: Ask HN: Developers who became engineering managers, how was the experience?

#37

Post by tome » Fri, Oct 13, 2017, 12:53 PM UTC

mikehollinger wrote: post #30

ddebernardy wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good tips. A few more: * Resist all tasks that you and your team can't figure out next step for. (They're not actionable.) * Find the maximum task length you're comfortable with doing yourself; try to delegate anything that you expect will take you longer. Keep this number very low (e.g. 15 min or 5 min). * To balance the latter, find the maximum hours you're comfortable with having someone else do work you'd do in a…

Go have a listen to this excellent podcast on delegation [1] from Manager Tools. They hit the same notes you’re hitting, but provide some additional actionable tips and tricks for figuring out when things are going well, about to go wrong, or going wrong. [1] https://www.manager-tools.com/2005/08/the-art-of-delegation

This is a great episode about their "balls in boxes" model of delegation. If you delegate it's probably worth your while to listen to it. If you are delegated to then it's probably also worth your while!

Re: Ask HN: Developers who became engineering managers, how was the experience?

#38

Post by dboreham » Fri, Oct 13, 2017, 12:56 PM UTC

Honestly it is a pretty thankless role and unless you are being paid very well to do it I'd recommend avoiding. Jump to being the business owner instead.

Edit: ok, perhaps it is ok in a situation where you are "earning your chops" as part of a plan for future world domination. Also in specific circumstances and the right company it could be a fulfilling challenge.

Re: Ask HN: Developers who became engineering managers, how was the experience?

#39

Post by elcapitan » Fri, Oct 13, 2017, 1:18 PM UTC

ninegunpi wrote: post #36

elcapitan wrote: post #24

I'm in a role as manager/lead dev, so it's kind of mixed. The transition to the managerial part was pretty rough back then and I wished I had gotten more support, many companies don't know how to do that well. With a developer mindset, what helped me was this (no particular order) * Go about it as a problem solving task. This can be as complex and fun as building a new system - you are building organization and cultu…

>I wished I had gotten more support, many companies don't know how to do that well. It's literally the biggest leadership failure when non-managers get elected to management positions - failure to coach them by senior managers, and ends to torture for everyone. People don't get to deadlift 500lbs after lifting 20lbs for previous 10 years just because someone decided they can do it.

There's only so much you can "teach" of that, a lot is learning on the job, but a company needs to facilitate that learning. If it was simply a matter of teaching, it would be very easy, but I think everybody knows the feeling of opening a book on "management", reading briefly into it, and then throwing it away thinking that it's all completely obvious. It's not, and you really only find out when you actually do it.

Re: Ask HN: Developers who became engineering managers, how was the experience?

#40

Post by wruza » Fri, Oct 13, 2017, 1:26 PM UTC

ninegunpi wrote: post #33

wruza wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve read first two -points about four times, but still have no idea what these are about (usual thing when talking to completely “other side of fence” minded people). Can I ask for some examples in context?

Sorry, English is not my primary language, so the grammar constructions might get odd from time to time, this might have been the cause. Point 1. Good engineer should know how to code, and how to cooperate with fellow engineers well. This means healthy balance of "hard" (engineering) and "soft" (communication) skills. When engineer becomes tech lead or engineering manager, being able to communicate, understand other…

Thanks for detailed explanation, it delivered a sense to me and is in great touch with my own leading experience. I even stumbled on point 2, and it took me a month to clearly understand that it’s better to let employee go. But before that I made dead sure I’m objective and not elitist (evaluated task-times, insighted into persons thoughts and knowledge, investigated virtually everything I was aware of in situation). That was pretty stressful and happened few weeks right after my assignment, but later I got few hints from team members that it was an obvious thing to do.