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What is expected of a engineering manager?

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Re: What is expected of a engineering manager?

#121

Post by madeofpalk »

langitbiru wrote: post #119
halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using male pronouns instead of genderless/more inclusive pronouns in your speech is indicative of a bad managing style (or just bad style all together). As a manager you should be inclusive of all genders both directly and indirectly, which includes how you use whatever language you speak. The people you manage could easily identify with a gender that is not physically obvious and using incorrect pronouns leads to a…

Some writers use "she"/"her" as genderless pronoun. Example: CEO should fire her own people for the last resort. What do you think of this?

I think that is still poor and confusing English when not talking about a specific person. I notice people do this when trying to make speech more inclusive, and I still struggle with parsing the sentence because of the unnessisary gender being mentioned.

You can just say "they/them/their"!

Re: What is expected of a engineering manager?

#122

Post by madeofpalk »

textgel wrote: post #120
madeofpalk wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To keep their people working. Women can be managers as well. Edit: I understand other languages might have gendered nouns for words like Manager, and when learning English it can be difficult to break these habits. In English, we have gender neutral pronouns to use when were talking about "generic people" where the gender isnt known. Managers are not just male, so when a sentence is gendered like that I struggle to p…

Oh but not trans of course, so polite of you to leave them out in your heteronormative take on the world. I would have hoped most were aware of the pressures the transgender community is under and would offer more care than such casual takes on gender in the workplace. A good place to start https://www.thetrevorproject.org/resources/trevor-support-ce... You don't have to be perfect but you could at least try to be be…

Trans people can be women as well, so saying "Women can be managers as well" does not exclude trans people because female-identifiying trans people are still "women".

It's not totally inclusive of people who identify outside of the binary genders, but saying "women can be mangers" does not exclude men or people who don't identify as either. I hope my point still remains though that using "they" as a gender neutral pronoun is a perfectly easy way to be inclusive.

> your heteronormative take on the world

I mean i am a (cis) gay male, so I don't think I have a heteronormative take on the world, but you do you.

(acknowledging this comment seems to be puposefully trolly, like a "false flag" troll)

Re: What is expected of a engineering manager?

#123

Post by textgel »

madeofpalk wrote: post #122
textgel wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh but not trans of course, so polite of you to leave them out in your heteronormative take on the world. I would have hoped most were aware of the pressures the transgender community is under and would offer more care than such casual takes on gender in the workplace. A good place to start https://www.thetrevorproject.org/resources/trevor-support-ce... You don't have to be perfect but you could at least try to be be…

Trans people can be women as well, so saying "Women can be managers as well" does not exclude trans people because female-identifiying trans people are still "women". It's not totally inclusive of people who identify outside of the binary genders, but saying "women can be mangers" does not exclude men or people who don't identify as either. I hope my point still remains though that using "they" as a gender neutral pr…

Oh so now you get to decide how they should self identify; how very generous of you.

At this stage you really need to stop and think about what you are doing and who you are hurting; they're just words to you but they're a lifetime of hurt to others.

Be . Better.

> I mean i am a (cis) gay male, so I don't think I have a heteronormative take on the world, but you do you.

You really want to call upon the equivalent of the "some of my best friends are black" excuse? I can't even...

Re: What is expected of a engineering manager?

#124

Post by dionian »

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.

I would agree and add: working on the right thing and delivering results

Re: What is expected of a engineering manager?

#125

Post by madeofpalk »

textgel wrote: post #123
madeofpalk wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trans people can be women as well, so saying "Women can be managers as well" does not exclude trans people because female-identifiying trans people are still "women". It's not totally inclusive of people who identify outside of the binary genders, but saying "women can be mangers" does not exclude men or people who don't identify as either. I hope my point still remains though that using "they" as a gender neutral pr…

Oh so now you get to decide how they should self identify; how very generous of you. At this stage you really need to stop and think about what you are doing and who you are hurting; they're just words to you but they're a lifetime of hurt to others. Be . Better. > I mean i am a (cis) gay male, so I don't think I have a heteronormative take on the world, but you do you. You really want to call upon the equivalent of…

If you have some constructive feedback on how I could have worded what i said to be better, I’m definitely open for it. I’m always trying to be better.

Perhaps it would be been better (for a number of reasons) to say “not all managers are male” instead?

Re: What is expected of a engineering manager?

#126

Post by quercusa »

neilv wrote: post #91
quercusa wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 4. Cheer lead/Sponsor for the team outside. Genuinely back your team. You don't have to (and shouldn't) tell them you are doing this - word will get back to them.

I'd like to suggest that, if one helps others naturally, the "word will get back to them" part isn't a consideration.

Agreed.

Re: What is expected of a engineering manager?

#127

Post by justforyou »

>> Dealing with underperformance/letting people go is a tough subject (which I don't have much experience): I highly recommend asking your HR Business Partner and your manager to help with that.

Yet another article written by someone without the requisite experience to be opining on the topic at hand.

Re: What is expected of a engineering manager?

#128

Post by vanusa »

Surprisingly undermentioned and underrated:

An ability for (which primarily derives from an actual interest in) actually solving -- as opposed to masking / deflecting / re-routing / siloizing -- so-called "communication issues" within and across teams.

Essentially a subset of "being a crap shield" as another commenter mentioned.

Re: What is expected of a engineering manager?

#129

Post by vanusa »

justforyou wrote: post #127

>> Dealing with underperformance/letting people go is a tough subject (which I don't have much experience): I highly recommend asking your HR Business Partner and your manager to help with that. Yet another article written by someone without the requisite experience to be opining on the topic at hand.

Exactly.

HR tends to know nothing about solving "performance issues" -- especially since by and large, they tend to have next-to-zilch understanding of what the day-to-day work is actually about - let alone what constitutes good or bad "performance". So from there - their role pretty much boils down to:

"OK, so you've decided to start pushing this person out of the company's bowels. Let's make sure we do with with proper legal CYA and minimal side effects, otherwise. In fact we have system in place already - it's called PIP:"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performance_improvement

"Ya see, you just gotta make up some quote-unquote 'goals' for the problem employee to 'agree to'. And then of course, don't actually support them (and just for fun, sometimes outright block them - subtly, of course) from reaching them. Whether they quit and/or have a nervous breakdown -- or inevitably fail at achieving the 'goals' we set out for them -- either way, in a month or two they'll be toast -- guaranteed."

The very essence of being a good manager, then -- is helping to resolve (or at least clarify) performance issues before they get "escalated" to that level (which is an ironic term, given that again, it pretty much always boils down to -- "how do we get rid of this person?")

Re: What is expected of a engineering manager?

#130

Post by musicale »

rbetts wrote: post #97
musicale wrote: post #93

Based on ostensibly well-known and successful companies I know, I would say: not much, and very little of positive value. Technical leads and senior engineers, however, seem to add a lot of positive value.

But at some point, an engineering manager identified and hired those leads and helped to facilitate a path for growth for those sr. engineers?

"Not really" on 1 and "absolutely not" on 2.
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