I liked managersclub as well. Interviews with real managers from diverse set of companies... One thing I like most about them is that they ask same questions to all managers.
Soft Skills in Engineering Leadership
31–40 of 134 posts
Re: Soft Skills in Engineering Leadership
#32I've had some god awful managers in my engineering career and my managerial philosophy is twofold: have empathy and keep coding. Most, if not all, of my managers over the past 10 years have been people managers cloaked as engineering managers who have all stopped programming a decade ago. So much respect is lost for managers who have turned their back on the very craft that brought them into management. Before the pe…
The best engineering manager in my career was not amongst the best developers I knew. (Conversely, the worst engineering manager in my career was one of the best developers I knew). He had two particular skills that many will never have or take a decade or two to cultivate: he could provide you feedback, empathetically, and make you feel like he is genuinely interested in your success and improvement, and he could re…
That's obviously a really great manager.
I think they're also very rare. And that kind of personality/social skills is not something most people, especially engineers, have.
I imagine someone with such skills went on to greater things?
Re: Soft Skills in Engineering Leadership
#33Please don’t call them soft skills. If they weren’t hard, there’d be better leadership out there.
Re: Soft Skills in Engineering Leadership
#34Good leaders are people who teach others to grow, progress, and ultimately become their own leaders. Most managers aren't incentivized to grow their engineers because it would mean losing them. I find it hard to fully trust my manager because I know my best interests are only partially in their mind. They also need to care about the business and their own position, which usually carries more weight than how I want to grow my career.
Re: Soft Skills in Engineering Leadership
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
The best engineering manager in my career was not amongst the best developers I knew. (Conversely, the worst engineering manager in my career was one of the best developers I knew). He had two particular skills that many will never have or take a decade or two to cultivate: he could provide you feedback, empathetically, and make you feel like he is genuinely interested in your success and improvement, and he could re…
Keeping current on coding, while not attempting to be the best coder in the building, is a key soft skill in terms of participating understanding, and evaluating technical decisions and problems. Empathy comes from placing yourself in the other person's shoes. This is also true for communicating enterprise-wide considerations to coding teams. They have to trust you not to blindly push senior management priorities. If…
I am having a hard time understanding what you are saying, perhaps you could restate? Coding is not a soft skill, even if that is in a capacity where it's used ancillary to other tasks such as the ones you mentioned.
I am glad you mentioned it, because communication and trust, on the flip side, are soft skills. You can foster trust through excellent communication and understanding Where the engineering manager does not excel in a particular area of expertise, he or she will defer to the ones that do. A good engineering manager knows their weaknesses, and how to ask for help. The good engineering manager will seek to gather understanding of the technical debts and use that to represent the coding team well. Again communicating those decisions effectively are orthogonal to that process (meaning you can communicate a poor decision effectively just as well as communicating a good decision effectively)
Re: Soft Skills in Engineering Leadership
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
The thing is that role model should not be your manager, it should be a senior developer. A good manager is not a role model to teach you, a good manager realizes the importance of lowly engineers having role models and creates a structured mentorship program to make sure that need is being met.
I don't understand why managers cannot fulfill both roles though? The job of management isn't hard (I'm doing it). Outside of the project management responsibilities, there is a lot of time doing nothing. If I wasn't coding, as a manager, 80% of the time I would sit around doing nothing. I strongly believe that managers should be able to fulfill both roles but maybe it's just because I've been burned by so many manag…
Question for HN: If you were talking with someone at a conference and heard him say
> The job of management isn't hard (I'm doing it)
What signals would you look for to tell the difference between these two possibilities?
A. This person has so much tacit knowledge of good management that they don't realise how much skill they are applying day-to-day.
B. This person has zero awareness of how their team is burning out underneath them.
Re: Soft Skills in Engineering Leadership
#37I've had some god awful managers in my engineering career and my managerial philosophy is twofold: have empathy and keep coding. Most, if not all, of my managers over the past 10 years have been people managers cloaked as engineering managers who have all stopped programming a decade ago. So much respect is lost for managers who have turned their back on the very craft that brought them into management. Before the pe…
I've struggled with the "keep coding" part. Not just because I don't have time in between my other responsibilities, but because my teams feel ownership over their products and have all the deep knowledge it takes to build and maintain them correctly. I still know how to code, but I rarely have enough depth in a particular system to know the appropriate way to solve something. I'm like a plucky junior dev/everyone's boss.
Re: Soft Skills in Engineering Leadership
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
The best engineering manager in my career was not amongst the best developers I knew. (Conversely, the worst engineering manager in my career was one of the best developers I knew). He had two particular skills that many will never have or take a decade or two to cultivate: he could provide you feedback, empathetically, and make you feel like he is genuinely interested in your success and improvement, and he could re…
That's obviously a really great manager. I think they're also very rare. And that kind of personality/social skills is not something most people, especially engineers, have. I imagine someone with such skills went on to greater things?
We worked together at what I can only describe as a data collection meat grinder. One of those places that loves to say it's all about people one side of their mouth, and act completely contrary to that in the day to day when it comes to chasing revenue and growth. He was met with heavy resistance from senior level business directors because he actually put what the company said were their principles into practice every day. This burned him out a little bit, so he took a break, and is now looking. You hiring?
Re: Soft Skills in Engineering Leadership
#39I've had some god awful managers in my engineering career and my managerial philosophy is twofold: have empathy and keep coding. Most, if not all, of my managers over the past 10 years have been people managers cloaked as engineering managers who have all stopped programming a decade ago. So much respect is lost for managers who have turned their back on the very craft that brought them into management. Before the pe…
If the shit hits the fan and it relies on a people manager to fix the problem, I would say that the problem is more with the company not having the right mitigation plan in place for this catastrophic problems.
Re: Soft Skills in Engineering Leadership
#40I've had some god awful managers in my engineering career and my managerial philosophy is twofold: have empathy and keep coding. Most, if not all, of my managers over the past 10 years have been people managers cloaked as engineering managers who have all stopped programming a decade ago. So much respect is lost for managers who have turned their back on the very craft that brought them into management. Before the pe…
If anything “keep coding” = empathy haha