What is expected of a engineering manager? • Hacker News Board

Re: What is expected of a engineering manager?

#101

Post by Aeolun » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 1:48 AM UTC

aprdm wrote: post #66

Timberwolf wrote: post #14

I think the article misses what I think is a vitally important part of the job: being a crap shield. A lot of the work of an EM is wading into the slurry pit with a shovel so your team are free to get the job done: bashing your head against InfoSec teams stuck in the '80s so the CI/CD toolchain can deploy to production, negotiating freedom with a CTO who wants to specify everything to the level of individual data str…

Totally. I sometimes made the mistake of "venting downwards" or wanting to be more transparent with the team and it wasn't a good experience. Individual Contributors usually do not want ambiguity or to have a lesser impression of the company or of someone, it isn't good for anyone. They also lack the context you have and jump to a lot of conclusions that are usually unfair. It's a hard job!

> Individual Contributors usually do not want ambiguity or to have a lesser impression of the company

They don’t? In my experience IC’s do most of this venting about horrible processes.

Re: What is expected of a engineering manager?

#102

Post by Aeolun » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 1:51 AM UTC

balls187 wrote: post #35

pc86 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The proper way" is not an objective thing and to present it as such is disingenuous. The best managers I've ever worked for have all, without fail, worked daily to keep as much nonsense away from the team as possible. The worst have either only been concerned with their personal advancement, or would just make the team basically fend for itself.

> The worst have either only been concerned with their personal advancement, or would just make the team basically fend for itself. It's those worst ones who end up in upper management precisely for those reasons.

> It's those worst ones who end up in upper management precisely for those reasons.

And thus the rain of crap continues.

Re: What is expected of a engineering manager?

#103

Post by Aeolun » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 1:54 AM UTC

_y5hn wrote: post #81

andi999 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it is different in Software engineering than in Hardware, but if you have a team developing hardware and they encounter a problem they cannot solve they have to turn to their manager. So the manager also gets technical crap/difficulties to solve. The 5% he cannot solve goes one level higher, so basically the higher you get, the more distille/purerd crap you get.

Software is more like turd production, than bridge building!

I feel the attempt itself is a little bit like trying to turn a turd into gold.

Re: What is expected of a engineering manager?

#104

Post by Aeolun » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 2:07 AM UTC

spaetzleesser wrote: post #9

One thing I noticed is that a lot of managers create an environment they would not want to work in themselves. A good manager should not just pass on orders from above and report back but try to shape the work environment so their reports can work well. A lot of managers in my company only ask “when” but never “how” or “why”. It doesn’t help to constantly remind people of deadlines without listening to and implementi…

I recently told my manager ‘we have literally never delivered a project on time because of process deficiencies, you expect me to believe the next project will be any different?’, only to be told that we had to deliver this one on time, because it was for a client (all our previous projects were too).

I just don’t follow how that logic works..

Re: What is expected of a engineering manager?

#105

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 2:31 AM UTC

Aeolun wrote: post #104

spaetzleesser wrote: post #9

One thing I noticed is that a lot of managers create an environment they would not want to work in themselves. A good manager should not just pass on orders from above and report back but try to shape the work environment so their reports can work well. A lot of managers in my company only ask “when” but never “how” or “why”. It doesn’t help to constantly remind people of deadlines without listening to and implementi…

I recently told my manager ‘we have literally never delivered a project on time because of process deficiencies, you expect me to believe the next project will be any different?’, only to be told that we had to deliver this one on time, because it was for a client (all our previous projects were too). I just don’t follow how that logic works..

[deleted]

Re: What is expected of a engineering manager?

#106

Post by danielheath » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 3:46 AM UTC

peterwoerner wrote: post #43

Timberwolf wrote: post #14

I think the article misses what I think is a vitally important part of the job: being a crap shield. A lot of the work of an EM is wading into the slurry pit with a shovel so your team are free to get the job done: bashing your head against InfoSec teams stuck in the '80s so the CI/CD toolchain can deploy to production, negotiating freedom with a CTO who wants to specify everything to the level of individual data str…

The #1 job of a manager (in all fields) is to keep his people working. It doesn't matter if it is engineering, manufacturing or the local burger joint. A managers #1 job is to keep his people working.

That’s a “utilisation” view, and it’s a terrible model.

People who already have work to do are not responsive to new input.

By ensuring everyone is working all the time you also ensure nobody can respond to the unexpected.

The counterpoint to utilisation thinking is latency thinking (“how fast can our team respond to requests”).

An instance of utilisation thinking: “Our roads are not always full of traffic, how can we get more cars onto them?”. This is clearly absurd; why is “developers have work to do” a goal when “roads have cars on them” is not?

Re: What is expected of a engineering manager?

#107

Post by sateesh » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 3:49 AM UTC

mancerayder wrote: post #70

How do you stay current on tech when you're doing mostly crap work and umbrella-ing and project managing, and your people are doing all the juicy innovative stuff? That's my current struggle. I'm leaning on doing work for myself on the weekend and evenings, which will be brutal.

I am not an manager, and this is something that puzzles me too. For an engineer to respect his manager, you expect the manager to be technically competent and in tune with recent technological developments. But as a manger you are most likely to be bit removed from technological changes given that most of the time is spent in meetings, talking, keeping people engaged etc. A few things I can think of but I don't know how effective they could be:

  * keep reading technical books, well-known/reputed engineering blogs with the intent of not understanding everything but atlas to get a gist of the technology changes

  * be engaged and attend some of the technical discussion meetings (not as an enforcer of some decision) but mostly as a keen observer.

Re: What is expected of a engineering manager?

#108

Post by austincheney » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 4:13 AM UTC

Setting hard boundaries is completely absent from software management and so essential to productivity and job satisfaction. In the military we call this staying in your lane or knowing your left and right limits.

This concept is often easily achievable through automation by removing the flexibility to allow knowingly bad practices. Such techniques are code validation rules, interfaces, method removal/redefinition and so forth. It provides a clear sense of direction by removing distractions and bad conveniences as passable options.

The concept also sets hard business limits on what work a team performs without intermingling in the responsibilities of other teams.

I am amazed at how absent this concept is to software given that it is so foundational to project management.

Re: What is expected of a engineering manager?

#109

Post by rkayg » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 4:45 AM UTC

anyone use anything besides the usual suite of software (google docs, slack, JIRA, etc.) to assist with management? When I was a line manager, I felt like there was a lack of tools for engineering managers...

Re: What is expected of a engineering manager?

#110

Post by fogetti » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 5:41 AM UTC

Something which bothers me deeply is the disconnection between the fetishism of management which is the most apparent on this website and the endless misery caused by the outcomes of 20th and 21st century corporate culture.

In most western developed countries (and most recently developing countries too) depression and anxiety is shooting off the roof in every possible survey and study (yes, that can be attributed to social media and others too). According to OECD data the 25% of the working age population of those countries struggle with mental health problems. That's about 166 million people.

If everyone believes that good management is possible and just the matter of willpower, while the numbers all point towards the opposite direction then we're doomed. Too many people are indoctrinated.