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From engineer to manager: A practical guide to your first months in leadership

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Re: From engineer to manager: A practical guide to your first months in leadership

#61

Post by MattPalmer1086 »

zug_zug wrote: post #50
JimDabell wrote: post #35

> Try simple, genuine questions you are interested in: > “You mentioned going to the movies last weekend. How was it?” This does not sound genuine. At all. It sounds like you are robotically adding a fact to your notes in one meeting, then reciting it in the next for points; like there’s a recipe you are mechanically following to ++relationship. I understand that some people struggle with smalltalk and need literal s…

One million percent, this is the thing that stuck out most to me. Maybe this is just so entrenched that it's a lost cause, but I feel like 90% of managers are just cargo-culting weird behaviors from other managers that serve no purpose (e.g. using a certain business slang like 'circle-back', never expressing genuine emotion, being incredibly circumspect, hiding the very existence of all disagreements). It's a weird c…

Business slang is no different to technical jargon really. It serves both to communicate some idea and that you are a member of the in-group who know how to use it.

Re: From engineer to manager: A practical guide to your first months in leadership

#62

Post by Magmalgebra »

crystal_revenge wrote: post #18

I find "engineer to manager" guides are fundamentally not possible to write. I've been a manager of a team 3-4 times now and each experience was entirely different from the previous. But this post makes the biggest mistake, something I have struggled with in every management role: focusing on managing down. Managing down isn't actually that hard to get the hang of if you have strong technical skills and reasonable co…

> Managing down isn't actually that hard to get the hang of if you have strong technical skills and reasonable communications skills. But managing down is very similar to being a good teaching professor: absolutely worthless and largely done at your own peril.

To your earlier point - even this is contextual. Incredibly high performing teams tend to be really hard to retain. It's not that hard to make your bosses love you if you're posting wildly out of band results - so the struggle is making sure the people who are actually making that happen stay on and stay engaged.

(I'll note that some of the most successful managers I know built their career on creating playgrounds for a small number of high performing ICs)

Re: From engineer to manager: A practical guide to your first months in leadership

#64

Post by [deleted] »

sfpotter wrote: post #58
crystal_revenge wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you may have misunderstood my point. Being a great teaching professor is an invaluable contribution to students lives and the world, but it is “absolutely worthless” as far as promotion and tenure is concerned. My point is not “don’t respect teaching profs”, quite the opposite in fact: Recognize that the teachers that had an impact on you in university that had an impact on you not only to no career benefit,…

This is what you wrote: "Managing down isn't actually that hard to get the hang of if you have strong technical skills and reasonable communications skills. But managing down is very similar to being a good teaching professor: absolutely worthless and largely done at your own peril." If your reply above is what you meant to say, that was not at all clearly communicated.

[deleted]

Re: From engineer to manager: A practical guide to your first months in leadership

#65

Post by unethical_ban »

zug_zug wrote: post #52
lll-o-lll wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First a caveat - I’m not a manager. I am at the top of the tech tree in a large org, which carries with it “leadership responsibilities”. I’ve also worn many hats over the years in various employment, so I know a thing or two about management. I think you are generally wrong. Yes, ‘manager’ carries with it a certain amount of administrative and organisational responsibilities, not to mention the important ‘soft skill…

Nah you're entirely off base. Leading is having an affect on those around you such that they voluntarily look to your for input. Any role at a company can do that, so to try to pretend that falls directly on management lines is a white lie managers tell themselves.

Not every role can do that, by a mile.

Some technical people are terrible at helping juniors in their careers, and relatively poor communicators. Their job is "get the thing built" or "maintain the servers".

Managers support each report in succeeding not just at their job but their career, and are an escalation point for cross-team conflict, among other things.

Re: From engineer to manager: A practical guide to your first months in leadership

#66

Post by zug_zug »

unethical_ban wrote: post #65
zug_zug wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah you're entirely off base. Leading is having an affect on those around you such that they voluntarily look to your for input. Any role at a company can do that, so to try to pretend that falls directly on management lines is a white lie managers tell themselves.

Not every role can do that, by a mile. Some technical people are terrible at helping juniors in their careers, and relatively poor communicators. Their job is "get the thing built" or "maintain the servers". Managers support each report in succeeding not just at their job but their career, and are an escalation point for cross-team conflict, among other things.

What are you even talking about?

"Roles" never do anything. People do things.

Just because somebody's job-description says something doesn't guarantee that persons contributes anything -- e.g. the CEO of yahoo who refused to buy google for 1 billion dollars.

Re: From engineer to manager: A practical guide to your first months in leadership

#67

Post by unethical_ban »

zug_zug wrote: post #66
unethical_ban wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not every role can do that, by a mile. Some technical people are terrible at helping juniors in their careers, and relatively poor communicators. Their job is "get the thing built" or "maintain the servers". Managers support each report in succeeding not just at their job but their career, and are an escalation point for cross-team conflict, among other things.

What are you even talking about? "Roles" never do anything. People do things. Just because somebody's job-description says something doesn't guarantee that persons contributes anything -- e.g. the CEO of yahoo who refused to buy google for 1 billion dollars.

And some people who are really great at managing software are terrible at managing people and conflict. So we hire people into "roles" or specialties.

I would not be a good doctor, for example.

Re: From engineer to manager: A practical guide to your first months in leadership

#69

Post by evanjrowley »

dahart wrote: post #31
crystal_revenge wrote: post #18

I find "engineer to manager" guides are fundamentally not possible to write. I've been a manager of a team 3-4 times now and each experience was entirely different from the previous. But this post makes the biggest mistake, something I have struggled with in every management role: focusing on managing down. Managing down isn't actually that hard to get the hang of if you have strong technical skills and reasonable co…

I am intrigued by your comment but a little confused as well, could you elaborate? What do you mean by ‘best manager’? Is that one who’s valuable and good for the org, or one that’s good at getting raises and promotions for himself and nobody else? If it’s the former, I’d love to hear more about why being clueless is helpful. And what does one do if caught in the situation you describe of not ever being let into the…

> I’d love to hear more about why being clueless is helpful.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge

As management roles go higher, the ability to align with other managers on the “big picture” is a key priority. This often involves believing and communicating generalities about the enterprise which are inaccurate. Having too much expertise about a given field will prevent you from aligning in this way, e.g. The Curse of Knowledge. Precision and accuracy in the enterprise come second to the political struggles fought to achieve consensus among management.

This was my conclusion after a year at a fortune 100 financial company’s information risk management department. Toeing the line and fitting into a mold are natural fits for the clueless and those who oversee them. How far you advance depends more on presentation than expertise.

Re: From engineer to manager: A practical guide to your first months in leadership

#70

Post by 1024core »

jaggederest wrote: post #37
libraryofbabel wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? The staff+ IC track is well established at many large companies. There are several good books about it: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/the-staff-engineers/978...

It's rare that there are actually anywhere near as many roles at the top of the IC pyramid as there are in the people management track, by usually 3x or more. If you want to get promoted to a higher level as an IC, you can compete for one of the maybe 3-5 staff+ spots available from the, say, 50 engineers around you. It's even rarer once you get above staff engineer, to the degree that it's disingenuous when most com…

You captured my thoughts more eloquently than I could. Thank you!
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