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Mistakes I made as an engineer, but had to become a manager to see

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Re: Mistakes I made as an engineer, but had to become a manager to see

#21

Post by beebmam »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #14

A more interesting question is, are these actually mistakes or just part of the journey from a junior engineer to manager? People problems and building relationships with your co-workers are things that I have realized are important over the last couple of years (Haven't done any hiring yet). In saying that, I'm not sure it would have been wise to focus on these things earlier than I did. There were too many other th…

> Focusing on code is probably a good thing when you are a junior.

I've seen what happens when people stop focusing on code. It's a timebomb for institutions. Code should always be focused on; it should be constantly rewritten, taking the lessons into account from previous iterations.

Re: Mistakes I made as an engineer, but had to become a manager to see

#22

Post by izacus »

ryanlpeterman wrote: post #8
Jensson wrote: post #4

"When I was an engineer I focused on work that improved my career, but then I became a manager and realized that my engineers actually should work to improve my career!" Funny how that works.

I agree it's easy to see it that way as an IC (I thought the same!). I think the more senior you become the more you will view impact from the lens of your team/org, even as an IC

Although, the more senior you become the more you also understand about using the best tool for the job. And burning away engineers time to do management tasks is not that.

Re: Mistakes I made as an engineer, but had to become a manager to see

#23

Post by Jensson »

stingraycharles wrote: post #12
Jensson wrote: post #4

"When I was an engineer I focused on work that improved my career, but then I became a manager and realized that my engineers actually should work to improve my career!" Funny how that works.

Depends on what you’re looking for in an engineer. I consider the author’s learnings to be relatively obvious, of course and engineer that “gets to know their colleagues” is doing great. Fact of the matter is that there are a whole lot of people that aren’t necessarily into that, but are great individual contributors, and should just be left to their devices as long as they’re a positive contribution, not just to you…

Making the team stronger often doesn't make your career better though. This guy says he didn't and he got promoted to manager anyway, and now suddenly he wants the people under him to make his team stronger rather than focus on their career like he did. That smells like a corporate climber who just started to eye his next promotion rather than a new insight.

Edit: Notice I'm not saying this is bad, this is just natural bias towards what benefits yourself. It is just so interesting to see how people who experience that bias shift now sees it as some kind of "insight" rather than just their own bias.

Re: Mistakes I made as an engineer, but had to become a manager to see

#24

Post by 13of40 »

angryGhost wrote: post #10

Technical skills are teachable to a coachable person, soft skills not so much

I'd go a step further and say that there will be times when you can sit across the table from a grown adult and explain to them the behind the scenes details of the performance review process, explain that you want them to do X Y and Z so you can build a case to get them promoted this year, just to have them tell you to fuck off because X isn't coding, Y is boring, and Z is below their skill level. "But please still promo me ASAP."

Re: Mistakes I made as an engineer, but had to become a manager to see

#25

Post by munchbunny »

angryGhost wrote: post #10

Technical skills are teachable to a coachable person, soft skills not so much

Soft skills are also teachable to a coachable person. I've seen it in action. However, far fewer people are receptive to coaching on soft skills because fewer people understand what "soft skills" are and why they matter.

I've met plenty of engineers (anecdotally, not a majority, but enough that it's a clear pattern, and strongly correlated with how junior they are) who lump soft skills into a single category represented by broad labels like "charisma" or "schmoozing" or "eloquence". But it's really a very big category of practicable skills.

Re: Mistakes I made as an engineer, but had to become a manager to see

#26

Post by HellDunkel »

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #13
HellDunkel wrote: post #7

I dont get it. Why would you care or think much about hiring as an engineer? You probably would not even be asked to attend interviews. If you vibe with the company and share the vision okay but this is not a matter of perspective. Why would you NOT be interested in getting to know your coworkers? Why NOT have interesting conversation or a good laugh at lunch? This has nothing to do with beeing an engineer or manager…

Why? Because you will eventually have to work with these people and their problems will become your problems, especially if you are seen by management as someone who can fix those issues. Young adults tend to group together and cling to co-workers because they haven't learned to cope with life independently of the situation they find themselves in. I generally like my co-workers, but I have no inclination to spend an…

I did not state anything about „problems“. Not sure what you refer to.

Re: Mistakes I made as an engineer, but had to become a manager to see

#27

Post by ZephyrBlu »

ryanlpeterman wrote: post #17
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #14

A more interesting question is, are these actually mistakes or just part of the journey from a junior engineer to manager? People problems and building relationships with your co-workers are things that I have realized are important over the last couple of years (Haven't done any hiring yet). In saying that, I'm not sure it would have been wise to focus on these things earlier than I did. There were too many other th…

> Focusing on code is probably a good thing when you are a junior. Leave the higher level problems for a little later down the line. Agreed that junior engineers should focus on code with most time (but not all). If you focus on the low hanging fruit outside of code you can have more impact overall without too much time investment there.

I disagree you can do that without much time investment. The time investment is in learning, not executing.

If you're a junior by definition you don't understand how to operate outside of code very well or at all, and you are still learning about operating in code.

Trying to learn multiple skills at the same time is always tricky. Most people struggle to get good at one thing at a time, let alone multiple.

Unless you are already becoming a more independent coder (I.e. 1-2 steps behind this point), stacking non-coding skills on top of that seems like a bad decision unless you are a very quick learner and can juggle multiple new skills.

Re: Mistakes I made as an engineer, but had to become a manager to see

#28

Post by ZephyrBlu »

munchbunny wrote: post #25
angryGhost wrote: post #10

Technical skills are teachable to a coachable person, soft skills not so much

Soft skills are also teachable to a coachable person. I've seen it in action. However, far fewer people are receptive to coaching on soft skills because fewer people understand what "soft skills" are and why they matter. I've met plenty of engineers (anecdotally, not a majority, but enough that it's a clear pattern, and strongly correlated with how junior they are) who lump soft skills into a single category represen…

I think "soft skills" disguises what these skills generally are and their importance in the context of an organization.

Things like navigating an org, knowing how to make asks that have a high % of being accepted, writing things for a specific audience and keeping conversations on track are all very important "soft skills" that are completely hidden by the "soft skills" label.

Re: Mistakes I made as an engineer, but had to become a manager to see

#29

Post by chiefalchemist »

> For that reason, people problems are just as important as problems with the code itself.

True. But somewhat understated / misleading. The difference is, people problems are 10x harder than technology problems. Technology is finite and relatively predictable. People? We're emotional and have lives outside work that of often come to the office. If technology was as erratic as people we'd all be making therapist money ;)

Technology is easy.

People are hard.

Re: Mistakes I made as an engineer, but had to become a manager to see

#30

Post by allenu »

ryanlpeterman wrote: post #8
Jensson wrote: post #4

"When I was an engineer I focused on work that improved my career, but then I became a manager and realized that my engineers actually should work to improve my career!" Funny how that works.

I agree it's easy to see it that way as an IC (I thought the same!). I think the more senior you become the more you will view impact from the lens of your team/org, even as an IC

I'd say the higher you move up in management, the more and more your own goals should represent the business's goals. A lot of ICs don't really care about the business, however, and I think this is where promotions are used as a tool to get them to care.

If you act in the interests of the business, the leadership of a company will (usually, but not always) reward you for your service to the business. Whether or not this is something you "should" do is up to you, in my opinion. As an IC, you can't make me care about a business. I'm there to get paid and gain career experience, the latter of which sometimes improves the business and sometimes not.

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