Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Soft Skills in Engineering Leadership

codingsans.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 134 posts

Re: Soft Skills in Engineering Leadership

#41

Post by BurningFrog »

dimitrios1 wrote: post #38
BurningFrog wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ev…

Sorry, we're not hiring for that role :)

There are many places were his skills would be very appreciated. The hard part may be to find them.

Re: Soft Skills in Engineering Leadership

#42

Post by asimpletune »

I think there’s a lot of great advice in here, and a useful exercise is to find equivalences - or equal but alternate ways to rephrase timeless advice x.

One such equivalence that I found to the above is to focus on regarding others honestly. Often times there are barriers to seeing people for who they are, so if you can focus on identifying those barriers and confronting them with yourself, you then have a shot at regarding others truthfully. The theory goes that if you can do that, you don’t need to have so much managerial social engineering polish. You can just be polite and honest and everything will pretty much work.

I have to say from personal experience that this has worked well with me. In the situations that it hasn’t it’s been due to others being caught in their own inability to regard me honestly. In such a case, I don’t think the smooth operating manager would fare any better or worse. So basically you can’t win at everything, but you can worry about yourself!

Re: Soft Skills in Engineering Leadership

#43

Post by borvo »

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #7

I'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…

This. It almost seems like people who lose all interest in coding/engineering/tech also lose respect for the people who do it, like some weird form of guilt/shame. This doesn't make them better engineering managers. You've got to keep that spark alive.

Re: Soft Skills in Engineering Leadership

#44

Post by aliston »

marcinzm wrote: post #21
halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fair but my perspective as a lowly engineer was I wanted a role model to learn from and help upskill my career. My people manager managers never had the skills to provide me with any growth, the only reason I'm at where I am today is because I decided I wanted to level up and taught myself outside of work. It's my goal as a manager to be that manager that I never had and lead by example for my reports technica…

A manager is only a role model if the promotion structure is Engineer->Manager. At most modern tech companies that is not the main promotion structure. It's Engineer->Senior Engineer->Staff Engineer->Etc. Engineering management is a different path you can choose just like you can become a product manager but it is not the expected path.

Companies like to claim this, but it's not the reality due to an imbalance in power between managers and IC engineers. A manager controls a reports salary, career progression, has more face time with VPs and so on. Software engineering is unique in that ICs can still scale to a similar level of impact as executives, but it is a mistake to think that a Staff engineer and Manager are equal in the eyes of the organization. They aren't.

Re: Soft Skills in Engineering Leadership

#45

Post by tootie »

marcinzm wrote: post #19
halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see where I made the connection between practicing the craft and hacking together solutions. If an engineering manager (presumably one who attained this position because they were or are a good engineer) is going to fix something, they're going to apply best practices because they know what they're doing. If an engineering manager was hired just because they know how to manage, well then they aren't really an…

Engineering skills decay with time and even the most technical manager will be out of touch compared to someone who spend 100% of their time on code. They also have the pressure of the buck stopping with them and not having to deal with the tech debt fallout which creates an incentive to just hack things. Some will avoid this but most won't. >presumably one who attained this position because they were or are a good e…

I was hired into a new leadership role recently. I had previously worked my up at a few places and go to the point where I was coding maybe 5-10% of the time at most. The new role hired me for my management and strategic experience since I actually have almost no experience with their tech stack. Coding is coding, but I'm slightly useless to them as a dev for now and I haven't committed a single line so far.

Re: Soft Skills in Engineering Leadership

#46

Post by marcinzm »

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #22
marcinzm wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Engineering skills decay with time and even the most technical manager will be out of touch compared to someone who spend 100% of their time on code. They also have the pressure of the buck stopping with them and not having to deal with the tech debt fallout which creates an incentive to just hack things. Some will avoid this but most won't. >presumably one who attained this position because they were or are a good e…

They don't have to spend 100% of their time coding. Why not 50%? If you spend half your 40 hours a week coding, after presumably having had a career in engineering as a developer in the past, coding half the time will continue to support your technical knowledge well into the future. I refuse to believe that managers shouldn't code. Actual managerial tasks do not take up that much time. Like I said in a previous comm…

I've written in another post where I spend 80% of my management time. I could cut it down to 20% but then I'd be building up the management version of technical debt. As I see it, there's a lot of things you don't have to do but doing them makes your team function better in the medium and long term.

Re: Soft Skills in Engineering Leadership

#48

Post by afarrell »

asimpletune wrote: post #42

I think there’s a lot of great advice in here, and a useful exercise is to find equivalences - or equal but alternate ways to rephrase timeless advice x. One such equivalence that I found to the above is to focus on regarding others honestly. Often times there are barriers to seeing people for who they are, so if you can focus on identifying those barriers and confronting them with yourself, you then have a shot at r…

> regarding others honestly

Strong agree.

Example: One of your reports says something that you perceive as self-deprecating.

It can be tempting to dismiss this as mere impostor syndrome. Doing so might soothe your fear that someone you manage lacks confidence but it does not serve them well as a leader. I advocate instead approaching with a spirit of curiosity: What about their experience drives them to that imperfect expression of their professional needs?

Applying a technique named "Clean Questions" can help increase clarity about that, if you're looking for something to google.

Re: Soft Skills in Engineering Leadership

#50

Post by bluefirebrand »

marcinzm wrote: post #17
halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should be coding because they're "engineering" managers. What's the point of having engineering in your title if you're not actually practicing the craft? They should be coding because they'll be able to relate to their supports in a deeper and more fulfilling way. They'll be able to mentor and provide guidance on technology best practices and patterns. They should be coding because they'll be able to more accur…

>They should be coding because they'll be able to relate to their supports in a deeper and more fulfilling way. That's a valid point although I've seen it go badly when a mostly out of touch manager (time is finite, even the most technical manager will be out of touch) thinks they're still at the top of their technical game. They then force out of date engineering decisions on the team. >They'll be able to mentor and…

> That's a valid point although I've seen it go badly when a mostly out of touch manager (time is finite, even the most technical manager will be out of touch) thinks they're still at the top of their technical game. They then force out of date engineering decisions on the team.

Yes, or even worse they don't respect it when their team tells them something is hard to build and will take more time. You get a very "back in my day I'd put this together in a weekend what's the big deal" attitude from people like this.

Post reply on HN