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What we've learned about hiring engineering managers

circleci.com

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Re: What we've learned about hiring engineering managers

#21

Post by itronitron »

lmilcin wrote: post #16
gwbas1c wrote: post #9

I firmly believe great software engineering managers are people who are adequate developers, but have excellent people skills. Why? They need to understand enough software at a high level to be able to manage, instead of turning lower-level details into management problems. But, they also need to find software development frustrating enough that they are happy to not have to do it every day.

I have worked for Intel for a bit. I haven't stayed there for long but I have learned a lot about how great engineering management works. Best managers I met had almost nil technical knowledge or if they did they were not advertising it very much. They were gardeners. They made sure you were occupied, you provided value, you did what you liked and all projects that needed staff were allocated staff. They will meet wi…

Best style I have seen is 'people' manager that has the soft skills and interest to do the organizational performance stuff, and separate 'project' managers that manage the work and teams. This allows technical staff to easily move around as needed to different projects without it being a big deal. That also encourages the project managers to be good so that people will be interested in working on their projects.

Re: What we've learned about hiring engineering managers

#22

Post by tomnipotent »

gamesbrainiac wrote: post #20

> Engineering managers at CircleCI are now dedicated to people management: focused on development of a set of engineers, tech leads, and team leads. They hold regular 1:1s and career growth conversations with the engineers who report to them, and are responsible for goal setting, feedback, coaching, and mentoring for them. Do you really need this? Developers will have their own set of mentors, coaches as well as peop…

> Developers will have their own set of mentors, coaches as well as people in their network that will help them grow

Not true, probably for a majority of people. Alumni networks and family connections are not the norm. A support network and feedback is not something everyone is privileged to, which is probably why so many companies eventually create roles like this.

> Best way to support an engineer is to give him or her a fixed budget for development, and time to actually learn new things and not have their skills stagnate.

Is there any proof of this? Every Fortune 500 company and a vast majority of successfully-executed projects beg to differ.

> It saddens me to see the continued emphasis on hierarchy throughout the industry

Because by-and-large it works? For every Valve there are countless shuttered "unstructured" companies that floundered due to bad management and lack of ownership.

Re: What we've learned about hiring engineering managers

#23

Post by gamesbrainiac »

peterangular wrote: post #4

I've always been apt to push for a more technology-oriented manager due to logistics because I don't need/want a non-technical "career coach" calling the shots on implementation/execution when they don't even have an IDE installed on their laptop... which is why I feel they specifically nailed it with this - "We look for candidates' ability to mentor and add value to technical discussions while understanding their ow…

Unfortunately, the term manager is what makes this difficult. If they were merely Team Secretaries, keeping track of the decision making and the financial implications, things would be better IMHO.

Re: What we've learned about hiring engineering managers

#26

Post by jiveturkey »

trhway wrote: post #13
brink wrote: post #3

> We look for candidates’ ability to mentor and add value to technical discussions while understanding their own limitations, supporting a technical decision without acting as a decision-maker. It's nice that they are keeping this in mind. I was a technical lead for a new product in the company at my last job and had a new engineering manager hired over me. I ultimately quit because he wouldn't let me do my job, insi…

> supporting a technical decision without acting as a decision-maker. manager is ultimately responsible for his team decisions (of course bad managers do try to scapegoat that responsibility down onto the team when the stuff hits the fan) and being responsible for the decisions can't be separated from making those decisions.

you are stuck on the model of manager-as-boss. in order to create a true engineering ladder that is separate but equal to the management ladder, tech teams need to make the decisions. it is the tech lead (whatever rank he may be, let's say principal for sake of argument) that makes technical decisions.

the manager cannot override that.

unless of course, the manager is actually the boss. which invalidates the tech ladder, really.

don't confuse technical decisions (as GP stated) with management or product decisions. managers are not ultimately responsible for technical decisions in this model.

Re: What we've learned about hiring engineering managers

#27

Post by jacobr1 »

tomnipotent wrote: post #19
ilovecaching wrote: post #17

My ideal manager is someone who has been at the company as an engineer, has great people skills, and knows how to think at the macro level. This person is promoted, not hired from the outside, and then proceeds to stop coding entirely and focus on his direct reports well being, the well being of the team, and keeping everyone unblocked. Otherwise, they just get out of the way and let the team do its thing.

> Otherwise, they just get out of the way and let the team do its thing. Are you saying the next best thing to an involved manager is one that's not involved at all?

benign neglect is better than malign involvement - micromanaging, bad judgement, disruption and chaos etc ...

Re: What we've learned about hiring engineering managers

#28

Post by bateman_ »

lmilcin wrote: post #16
gwbas1c wrote: post #9

I firmly believe great software engineering managers are people who are adequate developers, but have excellent people skills. Why? They need to understand enough software at a high level to be able to manage, instead of turning lower-level details into management problems. But, they also need to find software development frustrating enough that they are happy to not have to do it every day.

I have worked for Intel for a bit. I haven't stayed there for long but I have learned a lot about how great engineering management works. Best managers I met had almost nil technical knowledge or if they did they were not advertising it very much. They were gardeners. They made sure you were occupied, you provided value, you did what you liked and all projects that needed staff were allocated staff. They will meet wi…

I also work for Intel and I'd attribute this to the two very distinct tracks that are laid out, either the technical track to Principal Engineer, Fellow, etc. and the people track from manager, VP, etc. A LOT of people end up stopping after 3-4 promotions because it takes a lot to reach the final stages of this track but it provides a really robust pathway for people who want to have technical/people influence on dozens or hundreds of engineers but not necessarily thousands.

Re: What we've learned about hiring engineering managers

#29

Post by gamesbrainiac »

tomnipotent wrote: post #22
gamesbrainiac wrote: post #20

> Engineering managers at CircleCI are now dedicated to people management: focused on development of a set of engineers, tech leads, and team leads. They hold regular 1:1s and career growth conversations with the engineers who report to them, and are responsible for goal setting, feedback, coaching, and mentoring for them. Do you really need this? Developers will have their own set of mentors, coaches as well as peop…

> Developers will have their own set of mentors, coaches as well as people in their network that will help them grow Not true, probably for a majority of people. Alumni networks and family connections are not the norm. A support network and feedback is not something everyone is privileged to, which is probably why so many companies eventually create roles like this. > Best way to support an engineer is to give him or…

> Not true, probably for a majority of people. Alumni networks and family connections are not the norm.

Networks don't magically appear, you need to work on building them.

> Is there any proof of this? Every Fortune 500 company and a vast majority of successfully-executed projects beg to differ.

I don't have any proof other than my own experience. As to your second sentence, what on earth are you talking about?

> Because by-and-large it works? For every Valve there are countless shuttered "unstructured" companies that floundered due to bad management and lack of ownership.

There is no problem with structure. You already have it with architects, leads, principals and others. The problem is too much bureaucracy.

Re: What we've learned about hiring engineering managers

#30

Post by tomnipotent »

gamesbrainiac wrote: post #29
tomnipotent wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Developers will have their own set of mentors, coaches as well as people in their network that will help them grow Not true, probably for a majority of people. Alumni networks and family connections are not the norm. A support network and feedback is not something everyone is privileged to, which is probably why so many companies eventually create roles like this. > Best way to support an engineer is to give him or…

> Not true, probably for a majority of people. Alumni networks and family connections are not the norm. Networks don't magically appear, you need to work on building them. > Is there any proof of this? Every Fortune 500 company and a vast majority of successfully-executed projects beg to differ. I don't have any proof other than my own experience. As to your second sentence, what on earth are you talking about? > Bec…

> Networks don't magically appear, you need to work on building them.

It would seem that people in technical fields often have problems with this kind of skill, and need help to improve it. Fortunately we have these things called jobs where we have this great opportunity to be exposed to people like that.

> As to your second sentence, what on earth are you talking about?

On why structured hierarchies are successful.

> You already have it with architects, leads, principals and others

These roles don't make business happen top-down. They'll be kind of useless in a room without someone driving vision and direction and, you know, deciding what's good business and watching cash flow.

> The problem is too much bureaucracy.

Says every engineer that's never been a manager. Like it or not, bureaucracy is the natural friction that occurs from competing priorities and limited resources, and no amount of smart "self-starter" engineers is going to change that. How do we know this? Point out the number of successful companies based on either approach. We like to call this empirical evidence.

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