A great achievement, congrats!
Although, it may never top your blog circa 2001, it's a fine achievement nonetheless.
Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers
51–60 of 245 posts
Re: Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers
#52IMO being a good engineering manager is quite subjective and varies across companies and even teams. The traits of a good engineer would roughly be the same across companies and would be ranked according to knowledge, work experience and quality of code etc. And since a software engineer reports to an engineering manager, expectations are also based on the views of one person.
Upper management in different companies would have different expectations from what an engineering manager should be. Some would want them to code, some wouldn't. Some would want them to utilize developers as much as possible while some would want them to keep work life balance of developers in mind. Same with teams. A much younger team would have vastly different views on what a good manager is compared to a team which is filled up of more senior people. A younger team might want the EM to be more hands-on while a senior team would want more autonomy. Then you also have HR and feedback from various teams to deal with. Company culture and popular managers would also drive some of the traits of an engineering manager.
Having been an EM for multiple teams I've had to change my management style multiple times to better suit change in higher management and different teams. But I've always been appaled by how less content exists for learning about engineering management. Nice to see someone focus on this area!
Re: Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers
#53A great achievement, congrats! Although, it may never top your blog circa 2001, it's a fine achievement nonetheless.
We don't talk about that blog.
Re: Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers
#54If 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…
Communicate, co-ordinate, and delegate feels like a great sound bite for what entry level management is.
Re: Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
The grind of constantly learning the latest technologies eventually got boring, and now I really enjoy managing developers. For me personally, helping an unhappy or under-performing developer get out of their slump is a really rewarding experience. I don't enjoy long-winded, pointless meetings - but if you're organisation has so many of them, you'll get pulled into them anyway once you're senior enough.
i think i am an under-performing developer. if you dont mind sharing some secret sauce... what are the first questions you think about asking to diagnose whats going on?
What makes you think you're under-performing?
I think the "secret" is simply to make sure people know what they're suppoesd to be doing, that they want to do it, and that they feel they have everything they need to do it. That won't necessarily always work, because not all under-performance is work-related - if you've just had a baby, going through divorce or bereavement, I'd expect you to be 'under-performing' and wouldn't try to fix it.
If you do want a chat, I'm available on email (it's on my profile page).
Re: Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers
#56Do you also deal with the 'why' of moving to the management track? I've seen quite a few people becoming depressed and moving back from the mgmt track to their old position.
In a lot of companies the “why” is simply about money. There may be a technical career track but it’s really hard to move forward on it compared to the management track. So for most it’s just money. And the jump in salary is often enough to compensate for any dissatisfaction the move causes.
Re: Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers
#57I had written such a book too, but in Chinese, you can find it here if you are interested:
Re: Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers
#58Question to CTOs - are you happy? When I see what particular CTO does day to day, assuming he/she was an engineer before - it seems quite boring. It seems they've sacrificed their engineering side in exchange for a bigger salary.
The grind of constantly learning the latest technologies eventually got boring, and now I really enjoy managing developers. For me personally, helping an unhappy or under-performing developer get out of their slump is a really rewarding experience. I don't enjoy long-winded, pointless meetings - but if you're organisation has so many of them, you'll get pulled into them anyway once you're senior enough.
> For me personally, helping an unhappy or under-performing developer get out of their slump is a really rewarding experience.
This is a pretty nice approach. Congrats.
Often people are chosen in senior positions because the sell themselves. They are articulate and have "executive presence" and they seem to know what to do, but often they don't. I wish more of them were chosen because they listen, and they knowledgable and thoughtful.
Re: Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers
#59This looks interesting. I assume that this is very us-centric though? Have you gotten any international reactions/feedback during writing? I guess it's har to say but how applicable would this be in other parts of the engineering world? I've only worked in tech in Sweden and I sometimes feel like that "it's pretty much the same" but other times: "us tech scene is aliens on another planet".
That's a good question. I'm English and I work for a UK company. I had some reviewers at the 50% stage who were from European companies and they didn't say anything specific about this, but I'd be interested to learn more about the US tech scene being quite alien - I haven't experienced it myself.
Well, I guess I assumed wrong then! =)
And for me as a Swede the most alien thing for me is the "lone genius startup"-thing (that probably is very over represented/emphasized here at HN) where developers work for stocks(?) and hope(?) that the company will blow up and seem to take great personal risks. Of course that exists here as well in small startups but we have so strong work force-regulations that I don't think it can get that extreme. And now that I think of it it might be that we are the odd ones so maybe it's not so much u.s. vs. e.u. as u.s. vs sweden. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Re: Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers
#60I don't know whether it's in the book - perhaps it's in the " How to Win Friends and Influence People " chapter - but one thing I struggle with is communicating outwards and upwards. I tend to assume that everybody else in the company knows that my team works in the way it does because that's how you deliver software successfully. Often, this comes back to bite when I learn that other managers think the team should b…
> Often, this comes back to bite when I learn that other managers think the team should be managed differently. I’m going through this right now at my company, and it’s completely devastating our engineering org’s morale. I’ve never experienced anything like this.
Sounds like you and your colleagues are really going through a tough time there, sorry to hear that.