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November 1 - November 15, 2020
This book is structured to follow the stages of a typical career path for an engineer who ends up becoming a manager.
What engineering managers do, though, is not pure people management. We are managing groups of technical people, and most of us come into the role from a position of hands-on expertise. I wouldn’t recommend trying to do it any other way! Hands-on expertise is what gives you credibility and what helps you make decisions and lead your team effectively.
More than an inspirational leadership book for a general-purpose audience,
a reference manual for engineering managers, a book focused on practical tips
The secret of managing is keeping the people who hate you away from the ones who haven’t made up their minds. Casey Stengel
There are, however, other options. Managers who care about you as a person, and who actively work to help you grow in your career. Managers who teach you important skills and give you valuable feedback. Managers who help you navigate difficult situations, who help you figure out what you need to learn. Managers who want you to take their job someday. And most importantly, managers who help you understand what is important to focus on, and enable you to have that focus.
One-on-one meetings (1-1s) with your direct manager are an essential feature of a good working relationship.
1-1s serve two purposes. First, they create human connection between you and your manager.
Great managers notice when your normal energy level changes, and will hopefully care enough to ask you about it.
The bedrock of strong teams is human connection, which leads to trust. And trust, real trust, requires the ability and willingness to be vulnerable in front of each other. So, your manager will hopefully treat you like a human who has a life outside of work, and spend a few minutes talking about that life when you meet.
The second purpose of a 1-1 is a regular opportunity for you to speak privately with your manager about whatever needs discussing.
good 1-1s are not status meetings.
The second thing to expect from your manager is feedback.
the only thing worse than getting behavioral feedback is not getting it at all, or getting it only during your performance review. The sooner you know about your bad habits, the easier they are to correct. This also goes for getting praise. A great manager will notice some of the little things you’re doing well in your day-to-day, and recognize you for them.
Good managers know that delivering feedback quickly is more valuable than waiting for a convenient time to say something.
Praising in public is considered to be a best practice because it helps the manager let everyone know that someone has done something laudable, and reinforces what positive behavior looks like.
If you are giving a presentation, you can ask her to review the content and suggest changes. If you’ve written a design doc, she should be able to provide ideas of areas for improvement.
Asking your manager for advice is also a good way to show that you respect her. People like to feel helpful, and managers are not immune to this sort of flattery.
When it comes to your role at the company, your manager needs to be your number one ally.
If you don’t ask your manager about a promotion, do not expect her to just give you one magically. If you’re unhappy with a teammate, your manager may not do anything unless you bring the issue to her attention.
It’s great when managers can identify and assign stretch projects that will help us grow and learn new things.
Your manager should be the person who shows you the larger picture of how your work fits into the team’s goals, and helps you feel a sense of purpose in the day-to-day work.
As you become more senior, the amount of personal feedback you get, both good and bad, is likely to decrease. You are operating at a higher level, and your manager is operating at a very high level. Expect the type of feedback to change somewhat from personal feedback to team- or strategy-related input.
As the main liaison between you and the bureaucracy of the company, your manager holds some responsibility for helping you find training and other resources for career growth.
The other way your manager will contribute very directly to your career growth is via promotion and, probably, compensation.
When you are interested in being promoted, it’s very important to ask your manager for specific areas to focus on in order to get that promotion.
Realize that stretching yourself is about more than just learning new technologies: great CTOs have strong communication skills, project management skills, and product sense, in addition to good technical sense.
Developing a sense of ownership and authority for your own experiences at work, and not relying on your manager to set the entire tone for your relationship, is an important step in owning your career and workplace happiness.
Whether you are brand new to the workplace or 20 years into your career, the onus of figuring out what you want to do, what you want to learn, and what will make you happy rests on your shoulders.
It’s a pretty universal truth that once you get the job you thought you wanted, the enjoyment eventually fades and you find yourself looking for something else.
Knowing yourself is step one. Step two is going after what you want.
When you want a raise, ask for it. When you want a promotion, find out what you need to do to get it.
Especially as you become more senior, remember that your manager expects you to bring solutions, not problems. Try not to make every 1-1 about how you need something, how something is wrong, or how you want something more.
Asking for advice is always a good way to show respect and trust.
Plenty of great engineers make ineffective managers because they don’t know or want to deal with the politics of leadership in their companies.
How do you create good, effective mentoring relationships without slowing development down too much?
Mentoring new hires is critical. Your job as a new hire mentor consists of onboarding, helping this person adjust to life in the company effectively, and building your and her network of contacts in the company.
Even if you have absolutely no interest in management, it’s very difficult to build a career at any company with multiple teams without building a strong network of trusted people to share information and ideas with.
Alpha geeks get very threatened when people complain about systems they built or criticize their past technical decisions. They absolutely hate it when they have to take direction from anyone they don’t respect intellectually, and can be very demeaning toward people in nontechnical roles.
Practicing the art of teaching can help us learn how to nurture and coach, how to phrase things so that others will listen, instead of just shouting them down.
Alpha geeks make absolutely terrible managers, unless they can learn to let go of their identity as the smartest person in the room and most technical person on the team.
Alpha geeks who believe that their value comes from knowing more than others can also hide information in order to maintain their edge, which makes everyone on the team less effective.
leadership requires human interaction to exist.
Your internship program is not a way for you to get extra work done in the summer; it’s a way for you to identify and attract talent.
When we close our minds and stop learning, we start to lose the most valuable skill for maintaining and growing a successful technical career.
Mentoring provides a great opportunity to cultivate curiosity and see the world through fresh eyes.
mentoring forces you to hone your communication skills.
Senior engineers can develop bad habits, and one of the worst is the tendency to lecture and debate with anyone who does not understand them or who disagrees with what they are saying.
Whether you’re in the mentor’s seat or acting as the mentee, remember that your career is long and the tech world can be very small, so treat the other person well.
The tech lead role, after all, is a leadership position, even when it’s not a management position.
