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Principles of Engineering Management

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Re: Principles of Engineering Management

#31

Post by cjalmeida »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #21

I consumed a lot of blog posts like this before becoming a manager. It feels satisfying to read vague principles like this: > Facilitate wellbeing > Personal safety, dignity, and wellbeing of every team member are paramount. Team success is only success if team members feel good about it. But then you become an actual manager and realize that these are largely just feel-good aphorisms that don't really help navigate…

You would be amazed at the number of managers that largely ignore the "feel-good" part of the job, or even contribute to the workplace being a crappy place to work.

Like the author said, actively improving the working environment when possible earns you "currency" and trust into making unpopular decisions easier to swallow.

Re: Principles of Engineering Management

#32

Post by hitekker »

TameAntelope wrote: post #28
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #21

I consumed a lot of blog posts like this before becoming a manager. It feels satisfying to read vague principles like this: > Facilitate wellbeing > Personal safety, dignity, and wellbeing of every team member are paramount. Team success is only success if team members feel good about it. But then you become an actual manager and realize that these are largely just feel-good aphorisms that don't really help navigate…

I think "facilitate wellbeing" is more than just a feel-good aphorism, because it really does help when there's a difficult decision on your desk, at least for me. My instinct is to push hard, let "the most correct" idea win, and not really give a shit about how it impacts others. All, as you know, awful, very bad, no good ways of managing. Being reminded that one of my primary jobs is to "facilitate wellbeing" helps…

What you're speaking of is "Prioritize Wellbeing" which is a worthy belief to hold and to remind ourselves as engineering managers.

However, the specific word used by the OP is "Facilitate" which gives managers the leeway to be weak and lazy. A manager can say "I let my team take PTO a few days each quarter, I facilitated their well-being!" while they passively allow their stakeholders to dictate the workload of their engineers, with zero pushback. In practice, "Prioritize" basically means conflict and action, "facilitate" means whatever the manager wants it to mean.

Going further: most "principles" like the kind the OP wrote are designed for a manager's self-therapy. Beliefs that justify decisions the manager has already taken, dressed up in nice-looking words, the kind of drivel that influencers peddle on LinkedIn. Whereas real principles that the GP refers to are meant for self-discipline. Beliefs that call into question decisions, and force the manager to really think their next steps through carefully.

Re: Principles of Engineering Management

#33

Post by lbriner »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #21

I consumed a lot of blog posts like this before becoming a manager. It feels satisfying to read vague principles like this: > Facilitate wellbeing > Personal safety, dignity, and wellbeing of every team member are paramount. Team success is only success if team members feel good about it. But then you become an actual manager and realize that these are largely just feel-good aphorisms that don't really help navigate…

You are right but there is something that has to underpin all of this advice and that is openness, honesty and balance.

Openness because you should be able to communicate why something might not be possible in unambiguous terms; honesty so people know they can trust you and that you will tell people the truth and not try and avoid it; and balance because you will be prepared to go some distance for an employee for the benefit of the business but this is not unlimited.

It can be hard to tell someone they are not performing well but it is much easier with those principles in mind, "I think these are areas that you are not performing well in, if I can help you achieve those then please let me know how, otherwise I need someone who can do this job that you were employed to do".

Re: Principles of Engineering Management

#34

Post by kemiller »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #21

I consumed a lot of blog posts like this before becoming a manager. It feels satisfying to read vague principles like this: > Facilitate wellbeing > Personal safety, dignity, and wellbeing of every team member are paramount. Team success is only success if team members feel good about it. But then you become an actual manager and realize that these are largely just feel-good aphorisms that don't really help navigate…

I think this is a result of the persistent flawed way most companies look at management. The author points at it when he says that most managers are strong in execution, and that's true — it's viewed as the baseline trait for any manager. But execution and maintaining well-being are fundamentally in tension, and most of the time, execution wins if a choice is forced. I think we need to be splitting the role into ones focused on each of these competencies. This sometimes happens informally as it is, but making it formal would change the hiring patterns and maybe lead to better outcomes for everyone.

Re: Principles of Engineering Management

#36

Post by havkom »

As an engineering manager myself I concur with all the points.

Some of them are difficult though, for example:

“optimize the dual objectives of delivering value to the organization and giving individuals problems that build their skillset, impact, satisfaction, …”

and

“ Managers with excellent execution skills and deep domain knowledge must resist the urge to present solutions to their reports.”

To what extent should one allow suboptimal solutions, failure or allow employees to do things inefficiently with their “favorite tech stack” (in cases where it does not add business value) ?

Re: Principles of Engineering Management

#37

Post by marcinzm »

willturman wrote: post #30
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #21

I consumed a lot of blog posts like this before becoming a manager. It feels satisfying to read vague principles like this: > Facilitate wellbeing > Personal safety, dignity, and wellbeing of every team member are paramount. Team success is only success if team members feel good about it. But then you become an actual manager and realize that these are largely just feel-good aphorisms that don't really help navigate…

> Again, not because the advice is bad or wrong, but because it's just a lot of text around the basics of being a decent human being. Judging by the trends observed in the Great Resignation [1] and the popularity of forums like /r/antiwork, it seems that the basics of being a decent human being are often being overlooked by management. I took a very different interpretation of what facilitating wellbeing looks like t…

>it seems that the basics of being a decent human being are often being overlooked by management.

People working in tech companies may not realize how un-decent a lot of other companies and their management are.

Re: Principles of Engineering Management

#38

Post by vasco »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #21

I consumed a lot of blog posts like this before becoming a manager. It feels satisfying to read vague principles like this: > Facilitate wellbeing > Personal safety, dignity, and wellbeing of every team member are paramount. Team success is only success if team members feel good about it. But then you become an actual manager and realize that these are largely just feel-good aphorisms that don't really help navigate…

This right here is the juice. Generic management advice is like relationship advice. Be honest, care about the other person, respect the other person and so on. But anyone that's been in a relationship knows it's way more about breathing deep twice when you see the dishes not clean or whatever annoys you than the rest of it. Obviously you need to try and be honest, but good outcomes are created first and foremost from adequately dealing with daily situations in a balanced manner.

There's no playbook for being a good manager the same way there's no playbook for being a good partner or a good parent. The playbook would have to be too generic or too specific and end up being mostly useless.

Best you can get is someone who genuinely tries to improve and listens to you because they seem to care about you. If that takes the form of "how was your weekend" in the beginning of a 1-1 or having your back in a compensation review, that all depends on the situations.

Re: Principles of Engineering Management

#39

Post by dominotw »

havkom wrote: post #36

As an engineering manager myself I concur with all the points. Some of them are difficult though, for example: “optimize the dual objectives of delivering value to the organization and giving individuals problems that build their skillset, impact, satisfaction, …” and “ Managers with excellent execution skills and deep domain knowledge must resist the urge to present solutions to their reports.” To what extent should…

> To what extent should one allow suboptimal solutions

100% of the time. After all you can't count yourself being there to 'save the day' every single time, so whats the point of interfering here and there randomly.

Re: Principles of Engineering Management

#40

Post by hintymad »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #21

I consumed a lot of blog posts like this before becoming a manager. It feels satisfying to read vague principles like this: > Facilitate wellbeing > Personal safety, dignity, and wellbeing of every team member are paramount. Team success is only success if team members feel good about it. But then you become an actual manager and realize that these are largely just feel-good aphorisms that don't really help navigate…

Similar feeling. These principles somehow do not help me make decisions or build mechanisms for my teams. On the other hand, the principles in the book Turn the Ship Around, the book No Rules Rule, and Amazon's 14 leadership principles helped me a lot because they give clear guidelines on how to make trade-offs. In particular, Turn the Ship Around advocates pursuing excellence instead of minimizing errors. Netflix advocates Freedom and Responsibility. Amazon advocates working backwards (customer obsession) and making two-way door decisions. More importantly, they prescribe a system to balance trade-offs especially when there's conflicting choices. For instance, Turn the Ship Around explores how to make sure everyone delivers yet the leader can fully delegate responsibilities -- it's not surprising that it requires a system.
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