From engineer to manager: A practical guide to your first months in leadership

I am intrigued by your comment but a little confused as well, could you elaborate? What do you mean by ‘best manager’? Is that one who’s valuable and good for the org, or one that’s good at getting raises and promotions for himself and nobody else? If it’s the former, I’d love to hear more about why being clueless is helpful.

And what does one do if caught in the situation you describe of not ever being let into the fold? How do you manage up in that situation? Leave?

>The individual writing this guide appears to have only had barely two years in a hard 'management' role, according to their LinkedIn. How can they possibly be qualified to give advice on a subject that takes years and years and years of developing and refining soft skills, let alone consulting on the particulars of leading people in that time? Might as well run for President. What arrogance thinking they can go into an organization and infect it with the Tech-leadership-style-du-jour and think they've done some good.

The skills in leadership don't start developing when you become a 'manager' at work, it starts developing around the time you lose your baby teeth, maybe even before. From personal experience, there is little correlation between the amount of time spent in 'management' and how much one understands leadership.

> Try simple, genuine questions you are interested in:

> “You mentioned going to the movies last weekend. How was it?”

This does not sound genuine. At all. It sounds like you are robotically adding a fact to your notes in one meeting, then reciting it in the next for points; like there’s a recipe you are mechanically following to ++relationship.

I understand that some people struggle with smalltalk and need literal scripts to follow to get them started. But do the examples have to make this so obvious? If you need to work on your smalltalk, maybe look somewhere else to improve those skills.

It's rare that there are actually anywhere near as many roles at the top of the IC pyramid as there are in the people management track, by usually 3x or more.

If you want to get promoted to a higher level as an IC, you can compete for one of the maybe 3-5 staff+ spots available from the, say, 50 engineers around you. It's even rarer once you get above staff engineer, to the degree that it's disingenuous when most companies have a career ladder with those positions on it.

Or, you can shift to management, and have access to positions that might be as many as 10-15 per 50 engineers if you include middle and upper management. There never seems to be a cap on the number of vice presidents at a larger company.

It's unrealistic to just say "Oh continue to be an IC, do good work and take on more responsibility and you'll get a staff position", because there simply aren't the jobs available at most companies for staff, senior staff, or principal engineers. Also, it's often challenging to change companies when you're in those roles - you can't just pop down the street because a significant majority of companies just don't hire those roles externally very often. Contrast with management where being a director of engineering at company A often gives you a solid option on company B or a senior director role at company C.

As a related aside, the best practical book on progressing through management ranks as an engineer that I've found is The Manager's Path by Camille Fournier. Highly recommended.