101–110 of 148 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What does a “good manager” look like?
Exactly. If I could find good managers couldn't I just find good employees? This seems like the answer to the first line question of "how do I scale an engineering organization?" but you are not at an addressable solution yet. It's valuable but not sufficient.
I think this post missed one extremely important point. I almost never see it in blog posts, and yet the successful heads of 100+ engineer organizations all know this. Find good managers! Or groom them. Whichever. Just make sure you have good managers. I see endless posts about recruiting, and I see tons of posts about engineering culture, but I almost never see posts from these same sources about the nitty gritty of…
What does a “good manager” look like?
Someone who brings their team achievable goals, and the resources they need, and then gets the hell out of their way.
Someone who encourages leadership (in all its many forms) to come from within the team, and doesn't see it as a challenge to their authority.
Someone who understands that respect is not magically granted by position.
Someone willing to make decisions - sometimes tough ones - on behalf of the team, to communicate both with and on behalf of the team, and defend the team's integrity and autonomy.
Someone who understands that communication starts with listening.
I think this post missed one extremely important point. I almost never see it in blog posts, and yet the successful heads of 100+ engineer organizations all know this. Find good managers! Or groom them. Whichever. Just make sure you have good managers. I see endless posts about recruiting, and I see tons of posts about engineering culture, but I almost never see posts from these same sources about the nitty gritty of…
What does a “good manager” look like?
1. Organization skills/project management skills: ability to pull together internal/external resources, ability to create clear plans, ability to build relationships with other teams to make cross-team collaboration easier
2. Communication skills: ability to deescalate and mediate conflicts fairly, ability to give both positive and negative feedback regularly, ability to create psychological safety, ability to deliver bad news while maintaining psychological safety, ability to run efficient meetings, ability to make unpopular decisions while still commanding the team's respect, ability to engage with different personality types and communication styles
3. Delegation skills: ability to translate ambiguous directives from above into actionable tasks for the team, ability to arrange tasks so that individuals have the creative freedom to figure out how to do it, predictability in decision-making, ability to shield team from external pressure, ability to give negative feedback immediately, ability to fire low performers before they fester into team morale and culture problems
4. Coaching skills: ability to give targeted advice, ability to match employee's own aspirations and growth objectives to projects, enough technical expertise to point people in the right direction, ability to evaluate skills and hire for them
I think this post missed one extremely important point. I almost never see it in blog posts, and yet the successful heads of 100+ engineer organizations all know this. Find good managers! Or groom them. Whichever. Just make sure you have good managers. I see endless posts about recruiting, and I see tons of posts about engineering culture, but I almost never see posts from these same sources about the nitty gritty of…
What does a “good manager” look like?
I think this post missed one extremely important point. I almost never see it in blog posts, and yet the successful heads of 100+ engineer organizations all know this. Find good managers! Or groom them. Whichever. Just make sure you have good managers. I see endless posts about recruiting, and I see tons of posts about engineering culture, but I almost never see posts from these same sources about the nitty gritty of…
Completely in agreement. Hire a bad leader when the company is growing and you risk one year later to have the whole company infested by all sort of people that you would not like to have around (managers included). Some companies completely screw up themselves because of this. Startups usually do not think about this early enough and when the founders realize what is going on is too late and the company culture is s…
Having had good and bad in my career has saved me from realizing that this was happening and that I shouldn't sit idle but if I'm not idle and do something it becomes extremely disheartening to watch this happen (and then I leave when it becomes apparent that nothing will be done and I'm miserable under my manager)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What does a “good manager” look like?
There are several common things to look at, just off the top of my head. These all take practice. 1. Organization skills/project management skills: ability to pull together internal/external resources, ability to create clear plans, ability to build relationships with other teams to make cross-team collaboration easier 2. Communication skills: ability to deescalate and mediate conflicts fairly, ability to give both p…
Some time ago I went to the Dublin open house because they were opening news teams here and one of the positions was backed api engineer. Considering that I've been doing the same for almost 10 years and that I got personally invited to the event I decided to apply to the role. They rejected me even before having a personal interview. I wonder what is happening behind the scenes but it was very demoralizing. Was anyt…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Completely in agreement. Hire a bad leader when the company is growing and you risk one year later to have the whole company infested by all sort of people that you would not like to have around (managers included). Some companies completely screw up themselves because of this. Startups usually do not think about this early enough and when the founders realize what is going on is too late and the company culture is s…
Especially if you witness it as an employee and run it up the chain as far as possible and it gets ignored. Having had good and bad in my career has saved me from realizing that this was happening and that I shouldn't sit idle but if I'm not idle and do something it becomes extremely disheartening to watch this happen (and then I leave when it becomes apparent that nothing will be done and I'm miserable under my mana…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you've ever done an onsite interview, you'd understand what a gruelling experience 6 hours of whiteboard problem solving really is. The worst part, of course, is that these exercises are completely irrelevant to the work most candidates will do on a day to day. That alone feels like a joke. Not to mention that you will be judged by people who also don't care about how well you balance a tree but are forced to anyw…
I actually recently interviewed at Stripe (did not receive an offer) and though the day was long, Stripe question’s were very fair and relevant to the job. This was true from my first phone call to all my onsite questions. I was very impressed by the preparation they had put into their interview questions. So if you work at Stripe and are reading this, good work improving interviewing process
I think this post missed one extremely important point. I almost never see it in blog posts, and yet the successful heads of 100+ engineer organizations all know this. Find good managers! Or groom them. Whichever. Just make sure you have good managers. I see endless posts about recruiting, and I see tons of posts about engineering culture, but I almost never see posts from these same sources about the nitty gritty of…
This is honestly the best barometer of employee happiness. Managers who want to build political empires, don’t have their employees best interests at heart, who communicate poorly, who make questionable moral judgements, or push work down the pipe for the sake of doing work is what makes employees miserable. Companies who empower these types of managers are terrible to work for.
You can see a few people with little technical acumen, shallow knowledge of the latest trends, very bad on processes and no work ethic that still rise in some organizations.
These people spend a lot of time "managing up" on a side and on the other side they are also nice with their employees. They help them move up the ladder and pay higher bonuses demanding less work than other bosses. It is hard to find even good employees give a bad review to somebody that give them extra money and make them work "comfortably".