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Things I've learned in my 10 years as an engineering manager

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Re: Things I've learned in my 10 years as an engineering manager

#131

Post by satisfice »

mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #112
satisfice wrote: post #10

Why do people espouse goals like “not to be needed?” I never understood that. It sounds like LinkedIn virtue signaling. It’s a capitalist talking point along the lines of “I seek to be good and inexpensive capital for my corporate masters.” My goal is to help my team succeed in such a way as to keep my job or else get a better one. Being “not needed” hardly serves that goal. Look around you. We are in a world that is…

Its more about being a servant leader and not a bottleneck than literally being "not needed". Its a mindset of wanting your team to be able to operate without having to check with you (the EM) on every little thing. I've also heard it called having IC's be a "manager of one" where they can independently work on things, get work finished, etc. without needing constant nagging. A good manager I had once had the approac…

I like being a servant leader. In no way does that mean I can go on holiday and people won't miss me. They will miss my services. If people don't miss me, then they must HATE me as a manager.

Re: Things I've learned in my 10 years as an engineering manager

#132

Post by Shalomboy »

crjohns648 wrote: post #48

> A good manager is more like a transparent umbrella. They protect the team from unnecessary stress and pressure, but don’t hide reality from them. I'm absolutely going to steal this metaphor going forward. Being a "transparent umbrella" does require knowing the personalities of your reports, some people do get distracted when they think higher-up decisions or unhappiness are going to affect their team. Most people,…

My favorite manager told me a similar analogy before I left, but with a caveat; a good manager has to provide cover for the team, but it's up to the team to hold the manager up - just like an umbrella.

Re: Things I've learned in my 10 years as an engineering manager

#133

Post by nitwit005 »

dasil003 wrote: post #60
tmarice wrote: post #34

This kind of EM-focused articles often mention "coaching" and "career growth" -- I always wonder what does this concretely mean. Are they all managing teams of juniors straight out of college? What can a career EM, or even an engineer-to-EM convert who has been out of the coding game for more than a few years, teach a non-junior engineer on their team? I understand we can talk and exchange our concrete life experienc…

How does a football coach do their job if they can’t run or throw or block as well as the players?

Their job in professional leagues isn't to provide some sort of educational instruction, it's closer to being a strategist.

Re: Things I've learned in my 10 years as an engineering manager

#134

Post by Traster »

Schlagbohrer wrote: post #28
Traster wrote: post #25

>I wondered, “Who is this feature even for? Who will use it?” No one on my team knew. I think there's another key here - Don't assume someone else knows something. If you don't know why something is done some way, find out who does and make sure they do. I've been in so many situations where the organization gets complex - person A is loaned over here or person B is working on project X because team Y needed feature…

I sympathize with keeping one's mouth shut for political reasons. Having a boss who angrily shouts at anyone who dared use their own brain and offer an idea, I learned to keep my mouth firmly shut even if i saw countless problems coming down the road.

It's totally understandable, but it would have been good to have been given a heads up - I'm totally new at the company (new to the industry), assume one of these people knows what they're doing. In the end I got a new boss and convinced him to take a different approach once the first approach failed, but I would not have blamed my new boss for just binning the entire project and getting rid of me.

Re: Things I've learned in my 10 years as an engineering manager

#135

Post by nitwit005 »

> Everyone needs to care about the Product

> A few times in my career as a developer, I wondered, “Who is this feature even for? Who will use it?” No one on my team knew. We were doing it because we were told to. Morale was low. We felt we were working on things that didn’t matter - and we were. Eventually, our team disbanded, and engineers scattered across other projects.

There's no way they had no idea what it was for. They thought the idea was dumb, and they wanted off a sinking ship.

Re: Things I've learned in my 10 years as an engineering manager

#136

Post by ghaff »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #86
ghaff wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because your average engineer is so good at creating customer relationships and generating revenue. Customer relationships are certainly more important in some categories than others but sales is certainly key in a lot of B2B organizations.

I guarantee I’ll be more successful with a group of engineers doing sales than I would a group of sales people trying to do engineering

Both would generally be crap in isolation. (Assuming non-overlapping skill sets such as solution/system engineers.)

Re: Things I've learned in my 10 years as an engineering manager

#137

Post by Buttons840 »

I struggled as a team lead, a manager of sorts.

I was expected to do some programming, and so the "failures" of the team (which were often just normal human limitation) I would deal with by personally doing all the work myself.

Has anyone else experienced this?

Re: Things I've learned in my 10 years as an engineering manager

#139

Post by singleshot_ »

tmarice wrote: post #34

This kind of EM-focused articles often mention "coaching" and "career growth" -- I always wonder what does this concretely mean. Are they all managing teams of juniors straight out of college? What can a career EM, or even an engineer-to-EM convert who has been out of the coding game for more than a few years, teach a non-junior engineer on their team? I understand we can talk and exchange our concrete life experienc…

> the word "coaching" implies one party is superior to the other in one very concrete area.

The opposite seems obvious to me. After all, your manager isn’t writing the code. He’s not your boss because he’s a better coder than you are, but because he’s a better boss.

(If this does not fit your experience, I’d recommend quitting your job as soon as practicable).

Re: Things I've learned in my 10 years as an engineering manager

#140

Post by _whiteCaps_ »

evilduck wrote: post #125
gramie wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recall hearing that Google had a term similar to this: A "shit umbrella" was a manager who protected the development team from all the politics, blame, and mismanagement coming from above. A "shit funnel" was a manager who directed all the shit coming down, directly onto the team.

You forgot "shit spewer". One who creates the shit that someone else has to then deal with (usually organizational peers or the team beneath them).

I've always called those folks seagulls - fly in, shit on everything, and take off again without having to deal with the consequences.
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