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Principles of Engineering Management

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Re: Principles of Engineering Management

#81

Post by [deleted] »

TameAntelope wrote: post #56
hitekker wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're speaking of is "Prioritize Wellbeing" which is a worthy belief to hold and to remind ourselves as engineering managers. However, the specific word used by the OP is "Facilitate" which gives managers the leeway to be weak and lazy. A manager can say "I let my team take PTO a few days each quarter, I facilitated their well-being!" while they passively allow their stakeholders to dictate the workload of thei…

I just don't see how you can read "facilitate wellbeing" and be this upset about it, especially given how you feel about "prioritize wellbeing".

[deleted]

Re: Principles of Engineering Management

#82

Post by [deleted] »

TameAntelope wrote: post #56
hitekker wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're speaking of is "Prioritize Wellbeing" which is a worthy belief to hold and to remind ourselves as engineering managers. However, the specific word used by the OP is "Facilitate" which gives managers the leeway to be weak and lazy. A manager can say "I let my team take PTO a few days each quarter, I facilitated their well-being!" while they passively allow their stakeholders to dictate the workload of thei…

I just don't see how you can read "facilitate wellbeing" and be this upset about it, especially given how you feel about "prioritize wellbeing".

[deleted]

Re: Principles of Engineering Management

#83

Post by [deleted] »

TameAntelope wrote: post #56
hitekker wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're speaking of is "Prioritize Wellbeing" which is a worthy belief to hold and to remind ourselves as engineering managers. However, the specific word used by the OP is "Facilitate" which gives managers the leeway to be weak and lazy. A manager can say "I let my team take PTO a few days each quarter, I facilitated their well-being!" while they passively allow their stakeholders to dictate the workload of thei…

I just don't see how you can read "facilitate wellbeing" and be this upset about it, especially given how you feel about "prioritize wellbeing".

[deleted]

Re: Principles of Engineering Management

#84

Post by seadan83 »

and-not-drew wrote: post #70
bumby wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect you're right and the article conflates the means (managing) to the end (achieving an outcome). It's not unlike the military priority of 1) mission accomplishment and 2) troop welfare. But in fairness, "achieving outcome" is equally vague and it seems most leaders know they want Outcome X, but falter because they don't know how to get from their current state to that end state. Can you elaborate on how you'd…

> It's not unlike the military priority of 1) mission accomplishment and 2) troop welfare. I hear what you're saying, but I would be careful taking a military type model and applying it to a team of software US engineers mainly because I think the power balance is so different. If I'm in the military and I tell one of my subordinates that they need to dig trenches in the rain all weekend for the next 6 weeks, they ma…

The power balance aspect to me is extremely interesting. On the one hand, there is a lot of power a manager has: - do you get the good assignments? - will your performance review cherry-pick out-of-context a worst sampling of 'goals' that were created in the last few weeks, or will it be a glowing report of what you did?

I think those managers that ask their software engineers to pound sand are generally going to be bad managers. Notably, who should you ask advice from, someone that has designed 10% of the system specs, or the person that designed 90%? (Guess what, software engineers design about 90% of system specs!) Citation needed, but the amount of specifications that engineers have to fill in is quite mind boggling (what happens to this web page if DB is slow? What happens when a user clicks this button while this other thing is still loading, etc..). So while the 90/10 split is an exaggeration, the point remains, software development is a highly collaborative activity, particularly with the engineers. Some have said that a software's engineer main job is to figure out how to achieve 80% of the benefit, with 20% of the work. This aspect is missing from the typical unit-level command and control example, notably the "commanders" in software really don't know what the hell they are talking about unless they engage in actual conversations with the developers and users.

Re: Principles of Engineering Management

#85

Post by travisgriggs »

gkop wrote: post #78
travisgriggs wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This resonates with a basic "anti management" feeling I have. I don't hate managers as people. I often really like them. But I hate what the title "manager" does to people. Like "domestic engineers" and "waste engineers" of the past, it's basically become a title grab for "get paid more money." In particular for managers, it usually establishes a "the principal said I can climb higher than you on the jungle gym, and…

What does engineering leadership mean to you? What factors make it easier or harder to practice engineering leadership? For me, I like having a budget and a staff - it’s way easier to influence my organization with a budget and a staff, than without. I’m saying this only to encourage engineering leaders not to be afraid of formal management roles. You can make them your own. You might find what I found.

I have worked in the classical management structure a good chunk of my career. And a couple of times (including mostly right now), I have worked in something that feels more like a basketball team with zero or little management. Competent engineers play the court together and get the job done. I prefer (greatly) this second model.

Re: Principles of Engineering Management

#86

Post by tootie »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #21

I consumed a lot of blog posts like this before becoming a manager. It feels satisfying to read vague principles like this: > Facilitate wellbeing > Personal safety, dignity, and wellbeing of every team member are paramount. Team success is only success if team members feel good about it. But then you become an actual manager and realize that these are largely just feel-good aphorisms that don't really help navigate…

It also seems like 99% of management advice is about how to manage down. Not topics like how to set expectations with stakeholders, how to fight for budget, how to get your team positioned for highly visible work.

Re: Principles of Engineering Management

#87

Post by acjohnson55 »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #21

I consumed a lot of blog posts like this before becoming a manager. It feels satisfying to read vague principles like this: > Facilitate wellbeing > Personal safety, dignity, and wellbeing of every team member are paramount. Team success is only success if team members feel good about it. But then you become an actual manager and realize that these are largely just feel-good aphorisms that don't really help navigate…

Author here.

I think the lack of specificity is a fair criticism of what I wrote in the piece, but this is also something I was very aware of when I wrote it, which is why this caveat is included:

> The management principles below reflect lessons I have learned the hard way. These are things I wish I would have known and internalized when I first became a manager. By keeping this brief, I hope that it will be easily consumed, perhaps at the cost of people being able to fully understand each point.

Maybe at some point, this expands into multiple pieces or a short book, but for now, this is what I've produced. It won't be specific enough to be useful to everyone, but hopefully some folks find it helpful.

There is no manual to being a good manager. Only ideas you can project into your own approach.

Re: Principles of Engineering Management

#88

Post by acjohnson55 »

TameAntelope wrote: post #28
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #21

I consumed a lot of blog posts like this before becoming a manager. It feels satisfying to read vague principles like this: > Facilitate wellbeing > Personal safety, dignity, and wellbeing of every team member are paramount. Team success is only success if team members feel good about it. But then you become an actual manager and realize that these are largely just feel-good aphorisms that don't really help navigate…

I think "facilitate wellbeing" is more than just a feel-good aphorism, because it really does help when there's a difficult decision on your desk, at least for me. My instinct is to push hard, let "the most correct" idea win, and not really give a shit about how it impacts others. All, as you know, awful, very bad, no good ways of managing. Being reminded that one of my primary jobs is to "facilitate wellbeing" helps…

FWIW, what you wrote here is very similar to the situation I had and the mistakes I made that led to the lesson learned and that sentence being in the piece.

Re: Principles of Engineering Management

#89

Post by acjohnson55 »

havkom wrote: post #36

As an engineering manager myself I concur with all the points. Some of them are difficult though, for example: “optimize the dual objectives of delivering value to the organization and giving individuals problems that build their skillset, impact, satisfaction, …” and “ Managers with excellent execution skills and deep domain knowledge must resist the urge to present solutions to their reports.” To what extent should…

It depends. Part of the job is being the leader is being able to foresee risks and consequences, and also to evaluate your constraints. Sometimes, you can let something be a teachable moment. Sometimes, you need to prevent a decision from creating problems or risks. Sometimes, your reports will do things better than you would have, and you're the one who learns a good lesson.

Re: Principles of Engineering Management

#90

Post by computerdork »

tootie wrote: post #86
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #21

I consumed a lot of blog posts like this before becoming a manager. It feels satisfying to read vague principles like this: > Facilitate wellbeing > Personal safety, dignity, and wellbeing of every team member are paramount. Team success is only success if team members feel good about it. But then you become an actual manager and realize that these are largely just feel-good aphorisms that don't really help navigate…

It also seems like 99% of management advice is about how to manage down. Not topics like how to set expectations with stakeholders, how to fight for budget, how to get your team positioned for highly visible work.

And office politics can be brutal, especially in large organizations - watching out for other teams trying to trap you into unrealistic deadlines, pushing their work on to you, deflecting blame - You want to be a team player and help the company achieve its goals, but there are can be a lot of pitfalls to look out for when others teams depend on you and your team's work.
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