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Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers

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Re: Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers

#91

Post by vi-mode »

burlesona wrote: post #87
vi-mode wrote: post #80

OT: for those who have never been in leader/managerial positions: - Leading people is 1000x less fun than coding - Leading people makes your more money than as an avg coder - Leading people too long makes you lose your technical skills slowly - At some age and for most, there's no other option than leading, 'go or grow' - Leading bigger headcounts is comparable to competitive sports 24/7 and shouldn't be underestimat…

1000x less fun? That’s extremely subjective, and depends enormously on what you draw satisfaction from. Leading people can be a lot of fun if you genuinely care about the people you are leading and take joy from empowering and enabling them to grow and succeed.

Yes and no. You can move mountains with good teams, this is great and you will draw satisfaction from. But IDK if you had ever 100+ people in your reporting line for a longer time. Then you knew that it's everything BUT definitely not a lot of fun. It's super hard work and will push you and your mind dangerously to the limit.

Re: Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers

#92

Post by t_rope »

Congratulations on getting as far as you have.

I look forward to reading this, I've been making this transition so I'm sure plenty will relate to me.

A couple of points :

Is there anywhere I can pay for this in pounds?

Your choice of excerpts is very teasing, but I haven't had a chance to read any of the in depth content. Would you consider one of the sub-sections? That said, I suppose they did work for me... So maybe you know what you're doing!

Re: Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers

#93

Post by winrid »

JimboOmega wrote: post #90
brianmcc wrote: post #32

If 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…

Who cares that much about the salary when you are that point in the Software Engineeering career track in SV anyway? What, really, is the difference between making $300K/yr and even fully doubling that to $600K? A nicer apartment, a nicer car, an earlier retirement? These are pretty marginal things if the cost is spending most of your time doing something you don't like. The most common reason somebody becomes an EM…

Hah, 300k. Made half that building and then leading teams for products that made many millions in ARR. Man I'll never get over how good of a deal they got.

Re: Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers

#95

Post by Aperocky »

vi-mode wrote: post #80

OT: for those who have never been in leader/managerial positions: - Leading people is 1000x less fun than coding - Leading people makes your more money than as an avg coder - Leading people too long makes you lose your technical skills slowly - At some age and for most, there's no other option than leading, 'go or grow' - Leading bigger headcounts is comparable to competitive sports 24/7 and shouldn't be underestimat…

What are your opinions on autonomous team members? I understand that organization is important, but is it possible to have an organization with minimum red tape by setting goals and let team autonomously execute? Would that reduce management burden?

Re: Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers

#96

Post by jstanier »

matttah wrote: post #94

Jstanier - Great job, this looks really cool. Curious what icon set are you using? I saw you have similar style icons across a few of your projects, is there a standard library you are using or are you creating them yourself?

Hey - icon set? What do you mean by icon set? :-)

Re: Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers

#97

Post by thewanisdown »

jstanier wrote: post #27
blowski wrote: post #21

I 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…

I totally agree on your final sentence there. There's a number of things in that chapter you mention, and there's also material on managing upwards earlier on in the book. As an example of something I personally struggle with: what's the best way to have the rest of the company know what all of our teams are working on without A) going into too much detail B) being obtuse C) opening ourselves up for miscommunication…

We have an internal website with user-maintained groups/content. Every week, you get an email with major updates from the teams you want based on the important information they've been telling themselves. That's been useful for culling and focusing the information flow to each person.

In my experience, newsletters don't work well for internal communication. As you said, keeping the content relevant to a wide readership is too difficult. It does, however, work well as a recognition mechanism. A team seeing it's achievements blasted out to the company is very motivating, even if they are the only one's who notice it.

Re: Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers

#98

Post by jstanier »

t_rope wrote: post #92

Congratulations on getting as far as you have. I look forward to reading this, I've been making this transition so I'm sure plenty will relate to me. A couple of points : Is there anywhere I can pay for this in pounds? Your choice of excerpts is very teasing, but I haven't had a chance to read any of the in depth content. Would you consider one of the sub-sections? That said, I suppose they did work for me... So mayb…

Hey! I think you'll have to wait until the thing is done and then you can buy it from Amazon and other bookstores. Couple of months, I guess.

The publisher is in charge of choosing the excerpts, but I'll feed that back to them.

Re: Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers

#99

Post by zooweemama »

vi-mode wrote: post #80

OT: for those who have never been in leader/managerial positions: - Leading people is 1000x less fun than coding - Leading people makes your more money than as an avg coder - Leading people too long makes you lose your technical skills slowly - At some age and for most, there's no other option than leading, 'go or grow' - Leading bigger headcounts is comparable to competitive sports 24/7 and shouldn't be underestimat…

spot on!

Re: Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers

#100

Post by matttah »

jstanier wrote: post #96
matttah wrote: post #94

Jstanier - Great job, this looks really cool. Curious what icon set are you using? I saw you have similar style icons across a few of your projects, is there a standard library you are using or are you creating them yourself?

Hey - icon set? What do you mean by icon set? :-)

Just the images on the front page, guess a bit bigger than icons!
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