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?

#71

Post by kal444 » Sat, Oct 14, 2017, 4:00 AM UTC

j_s wrote: post #58

Ask HN: Just made Director, now what? | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14937290 (Aug 2017, only 38 comments) Book recommendations: >gtf21: Would recommend very highly: (1) Andrew Grove's "High Output Management" (controversial recommendation) https://amzn.com/dp/B015VACHOK/ $13.99 2015;4+stars;153 reviews >killjoywashere: I like Lazlo Bock's book, Work Rules! https://amzn.com/dp/B00MEMMVB8/ $16.99 2015;4+stars;…

great list of books

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

#72

Post by mikehollinger » Sat, Oct 14, 2017, 12:43 PM UTC

positr0n wrote: post #46

mikehollinger wrote: post #32

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…

Missing link (I assume) https://www.manager-tools.com/ :)

Yep. :-) of course, I double posted which you can see with the correct link, then couldn’t edit the post thanks to turning on the “anti distraction” features in HN. ;)

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

#73

Post by bsvalley » Sat, Oct 14, 2017, 2:47 PM UTC

These are all the minimum requirements for an engineering manager. If I hire a new software engineer I’d excpect to see someone capable of building awesome products. Same for a manager, being good at managing a dev team is for me the minimum requirement. If I were to push the boundaries further, I’d say that you have to be likable, friendly, inspiring, extremely adaptable to different personalities and totally transparent. Be straightforward whenever you can, cut the BS when it comes to career growth. Put yourself at risk and become friends with all your direct reports. The further you stand the harder it is to maintain a healthy relationship. Get your hands dirty. That’s how you seperate an awesome eng manager from the pack.

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

#74

Post by muzani » Sun, Oct 15, 2017, 12:42 AM UTC

I've made the mistake of being a "tech lead". The term usually means some who plays a sort of CTO role but is also a key programmer. It's really tempting because you get a star player salary, but also make full use of your technical skills.

A programmer needs a lot of deep, focused work to do their job, whereas a manager needs to be available.

Managers are the spine and nervous system of a company. They need to transfer information from one part to another quickly. They need to communicate a lot, make decisions quickly. They train newbies, manage project progress, deal with issues.

A manager who wants to do technical work should probably limit himself to more shallow tasks like bug triaging or maybe setting up a checklist of things for the other programmers to do.

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

#75

Post by kasiratnam » Mon, Oct 16, 2017, 8:05 AM UTC

Agreed. I found that books were good for learning the language and theory of management, but the important stuff -- interacting with, influencing and negotiating with people -- that only comes from practice and reflection.