Common Mistakes of New Engineering Managers • Hacker News Board

Re: Common Mistakes of New Engineering Managers

#131

Post by daenney » Wed, Mar 17, 2021, 4:02 PM UTC

mynegation wrote: post #56

daenney wrote: post #21

In about 90% of companies I’ve seen they expect you to do all the manager things and be an engineer too. It’s not so much a mistake individuals make as that it’s an explicit expectation that you’ll be wearing multiple hats. Folks generally get bombarded to manager because there’s no career ladder and this is what people think they have to do next to be able to continue to grow. And once you become a manager it doesn’…

> And once you become a manager it doesn’t suddenly create a head count to backfill the “loss” of an engineer so there is continued pressure on you to do both. That must be on the top of your “new engineering manager” TODO list.

It usually is. But the fact that it’s on the top of the list doesn’t mean there’s head count available. Most organisations do this through planning phases and depending on how often these happen it can be a while. Then add the time it actually takes to hire someone.

Re: Common Mistakes of New Engineering Managers

#132

Post by camjohnson26 » Wed, Mar 17, 2021, 4:05 PM UTC

sanderjd wrote: post #74

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I just throw in a wrinkle, I'm what could be described (from this list) as an Engineering Manager and Tech Lead. I architect and implement solutions while also doing all the traditional managerial duties. I feel like I've been eaten alive lately on HN that this arrangement isn't possible and you cannot do both well, but I beg to differ.

What I would say is that it's possible but very rare to do this well, and furthermore that people often don't have an accurate sense of how well they're doing at it. The individuals on the team might know but might not want to say, but an even bigger problem is the individuals on the team not being aware there is a better way. I was about a decade into my career before I had an experienced dedicated engineering manag…

A lot of us have been an engineer on a team where the dev manager thought they were contributing but were actually taking all the interesting architectural problems for themselves and making all the decisions, which quickly becomes extremely demotivating since the opportunities to advance your own skills quickly dry up and you’re left just mindlessly cranking out code. The worst is when an abstraction is imposed on the team that doesn’t adequately cover the problem, so you have to spend twice as much time bending the code to make the dev manager happy instead of doing it the way you think is best.

Granted this is just one way that situation can go, I’m sure there’s plenty of effective dev managers who still write code regularly, just hasn’t been my experience.

Re: Common Mistakes of New Engineering Managers

#133

Post by revel » Wed, Mar 17, 2021, 4:06 PM UTC

nomy99 wrote: post #92

gfodor wrote: post #65

1. Become an engineering manager 2. Stop coding 3. Do well for a few years until you become out of touch 4. Watch your team stop respecting you on technical subjects because you’re behind the times and too rusty but don’t know it so look foolish and are ignored when you give suggestions, which radically undermines your relationships with them as well as your ability to lead 5. Watch as your role morphs from a manager…

Though I thoroughly enjoyed reading this dark path, in reality the bar is set so high in top companies that an engineering manager is usually an architect/senior engineer/and a people manager. So most don't make it, and those who do have a tremendous career that's fulfilling and financially rewarding.

This is a great observation. At Amazon it's quite possible to become an L5 manager after being an SDE II for a while, but most of the people who do find it very challenging. They don't have the organizational clout to get things done because nobody respects a manager at that level and because more senior technical folks will steamroll over your technical opinion. To be a successful EM there you pretty much have to have made it to SDE III before switching over.

Re: Common Mistakes of New Engineering Managers

#134

Post by camjohnson26 » Wed, Mar 17, 2021, 4:08 PM UTC

bzzt wrote: post #87

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I just throw in a wrinkle, I'm what could be described (from this list) as an Engineering Manager and Tech Lead. I architect and implement solutions while also doing all the traditional managerial duties. I feel like I've been eaten alive lately on HN that this arrangement isn't possible and you cannot do both well, but I beg to differ.

I don't doubt that it's possible. Except from having these creepy "one-on-ones" and review meetings, I have no idea what the engineering manager is even doing all day, never seen any transparency around this. "attending meetings" is what they say, but what meetings and why, I have no idea. Nothing is delivered and nothing comes out of it, I really think it's a bullshit job. "Sets tone, handles career growth, shieldin…

I feel the exact opposite, as a dev I don’t want to have to explain why my team’s work takes time, why we can’t do 50 things at once, and why we have to set priorities to the product teams or external stakeholders, I just want to write code. The engineering manager should enable the engineers to not have to get distracted by all the organizational chaos around them, their entire focus should be on developer productivity.

Re: Common Mistakes of New Engineering Managers

#135

Post by secondcoming » Wed, Mar 17, 2021, 4:10 PM UTC

gfodor wrote: post #65

1. Become an engineering manager 2. Stop coding 3. Do well for a few years until you become out of touch 4. Watch your team stop respecting you on technical subjects because you’re behind the times and too rusty but don’t know it so look foolish and are ignored when you give suggestions, which radically undermines your relationships with them as well as your ability to lead 5. Watch as your role morphs from a manager…

I hope your realise that the days of being a white, middle aged programmer are coming to a close. If anything, get some management/leadership skills under your belt if you get the chance.

Re: Common Mistakes of New Engineering Managers

#136

Post by ghaff » Wed, Mar 17, 2021, 4:15 PM UTC

meddlepal wrote: post #94

dominotw wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> move on. move on to where? managers get paid more than IC on average everywhere. Sure, if you are staff level stellar IC you might get paid on par with management but most ppl aren't.

Don't sell yourself out for money unless you need to. Figure out the amount of money you would like to make then if your at not getting paid that at CurrentCo go find a darling SV company, unicorn, or a FAANG+Microsoft and switch to an IC role at one of those companies and get paid better. Going into management for money is a terrible reason to become a manager... Unless of course your goal is executive management...…

You're sort of arguing though that, if you don't want to go into management, you should become an extraordinary IC (or just accept you'll get paid less money).

Re: Common Mistakes of New Engineering Managers

#137

Post by Trasmatta » Wed, Mar 17, 2021, 4:20 PM UTC

poorman wrote: post #101

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really enjoy having 3 different managers to report to? All of whom have 3 different projects they’re dealing with? IMO, it’s better to have a 1:1 ratio of managers to teams. A 3:3 ratio is a recipe for endless meetings and communication overhead. 1:1 and 3:3 have the same number of employees, but 1:1 eliminates all of the communication overhead because there’s only 1 manager per team instead of 3. In my experi…

I'm not sure where the 3 managers comes from. Product manager (Product Owner in scrum), Senior Dev / Tech Lead, Dev1, Dev2, QA, and UI/UX Designer all report to Engineering manager. Further, changing the mindset from "as a manager these reports work for me" to "as a manager I work for these reports" improves the feeling of ICs having "multiple managers". The managers job should largely be unblocking the ICs.

> all report to Engineering manager

In my experience, product managers have never reported to an engineering manager.

Which is probably part of the problem, and why this type of hierarchy can lead to a "3 managers" type scenario. The product manager, senior dev / tech lead, and engineering manager all have some management responsibilities. When the separation of responsibility is not clearly delineated, so the regular team members are left in an awkward position of having 3 different people they have to report to, and often get conflicting feedback from each of them.

Re: Common Mistakes of New Engineering Managers

#138

Post by humanlion87 » Wed, Mar 17, 2021, 4:28 PM UTC

gfodor wrote: post #129

fatnoah wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The real issue is that a lot of people who are pushed or drawn into management roles don’t actually like managing or leading. Some are pushed into management because they’re the most competent IC on the team I think this is spot-on. People, for whatever reason, view management as the next step of a career when it's actually a career change. Yes, it's in the same domain, but it's a totally different job. I've done th…

I don't agree with this. I enjoy management and coding. However, when I'm in a manager role, I consider contributing with coding to be an essential part of the job, to maintain my ability to lead the team with credibility, truly understand what their job is like, and differentiate myself relative to other managers, who by and large have bought into the narrative they can't and shouldn't try to code. This cuts directl…

I would like to add my perspective as an IC who is reporting to a technically-focused manager. I feel frustrated that my manager does not spend even 10% of the time they spend coding on coaching/guiding/giving feedback to me. I feel that part is more important aspect of being a manager compared to churning out code. I understand the need to keep on top of the codebase, especially when coding is something you really like. But if you don't spend enough time on the growth of your reports (amongst other responsibilities of a manager), why bother becoming a manager?

Edit: Just to clarify, the question in my post is kind of directed to my manager and not to parent commenter :)

Re: Common Mistakes of New Engineering Managers

#139

Post by yaml-ops-guy » Wed, Mar 17, 2021, 4:29 PM UTC

ImprovedSilence wrote: post #124

fatnoah wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The real issue is that a lot of people who are pushed or drawn into management roles don’t actually like managing or leading. Some are pushed into management because they’re the most competent IC on the team I think this is spot-on. People, for whatever reason, view management as the next step of a career when it's actually a career change. Yes, it's in the same domain, but it's a totally different job. I've done th…

I agree here to that this is the exact issue. I will also add though that I think there is another dimension as well. I think much perceived middle manager "incompetence" stems from middle management juggling direction/pressure/expectations from senior management, and the realities of the program and the engineers. The best managers are capable of managing expectations from above while keeping their team shielded fro…

How have you found success balancing these things? It’s been my experience that managers of the first group eventually become unintentional members of the second group, even despite their best efforts to maintain productivity of their subordinates with intentional prioritization and grooming exercises because the business wants that new feature yesterday, and not getting it means lost revenue, angry customers and negative performance reviews.

What happens though when the business puts these types of middle managers in the impossible position of not being able to say “no, this isn’t a priority right now” but still expected to maintain the same amounts of engineering productivity and feature throughput?

I didn’t write this article, but it sums up my headspace, currently: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/stop-doing-more-less-2019-mat...

Re: Common Mistakes of New Engineering Managers

#140

Post by Xylakant » Wed, Mar 17, 2021, 4:32 PM UTC

gfodor wrote: post #102

bzzt wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get it, doesn't everyone dislike/struggle with these things? Who likes context switching, office politics, sitting in meetings and having difficult conversations

The truth is that if you’re a manager who has no other marketable skills, you can only hate pointless meetings so much since without them you’d probably be putting your resume in down at the local Starbucks. Clear an engineer’s calendar and you probably make a more productive engineer, clear a manager’s calendar and regardless of the consequences to everyone else one thing is sure: that person’s job function is no lo…

Good managers should abhor pointless meetings as much as anyone else - their task is to make useful meetings. Anything else is just a waste of time and wasting everyone’s time is not exactly the hallmark of a good manager. Now, there’s people that hate all meetings and regard them all as a waste of time and if you’re one of those, you’ll never acquire the skill to actually make meetings useful - this is a skill which needs training like any other skill does.