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January 3 - January 12, 2021
most of the challenge of engineering management is in the intersection of “engineering” and “management.”
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.
The secret of managing is keeping the people who hate you away from the ones who haven’t made up their minds. Casey Stengel
Ideally, the feedback you get from your manager will be somewhat public if it’s praise, and private if it’s criticism.
delivering feedback quickly is more valuable than waiting for a convenient time to say something.
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.
Her job is to do the best thing for the company and the team. It is not to do whatever it takes to make you happy all the time.
Asking for advice is always a good way to show respect and trust.
that gives you an opportunity to work on another management skill: communicating what needs to happen. If you expect him to do research on his own before asking you a question, tell him so!
Mentoring a new hire by helping her work through the documents, and having her modify those documents with any surprises she encounters during onboarding, provides a powerful message of commitment to her.
Adopt the mindset that network building is a worthwhile investment of your time and energy.
Whatever you do, don’t say yes and then fail to actually do the mentoring work.
If you have ever wondered why people don’t seem to come to you for help despite your clearly strong technical skills, ask yourself whether you’re showing some signs of being an alpha geek.
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.
you must be able to listen and communicate in a way that person can understand,
The idea that the tech lead role should automatically be given to the most experienced engineer, the one who can handle the most complex features or who writes the best code, is a common misconception that even experienced managers fall for.
Tech lead is not the job for the person who wants the freedom to focus deeply on the details of her own code.
My job as tech lead was to continue to write code, but with the added responsibilities of representing the group to management, vetting our plans for feature delivery, and dealing with a lot of the details of the project management process.
If a tech lead is not managing directly, they are still expected to provide mentorship and guidance to the other members of the team.
they are scaling themselves by delegating work effectively
They focus on the whole team’s productivity and strive to increase the impact of ...
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They are also learning how to partner effectively with product, analytics, and other areas of the business.
use their expertise at a larger scale so that their whole team gets better.
tech leads will be working on one major new technical skill: project management.
Being a tech lead is an exercise in influencing without authority.
Your highest priority as a tech lead is taking a wide view of the work so that you keep the project moving.
As you move forward in your career, you need to understand how to break down work that has complexity beyond the scope of what you can do as an individual.
project management has to happen, and as tech lead, you should be doing it when it is needed, especially for deeply technical projects.
They tend to blame all problems on a failure to follow the best process, instead of acknowledging the need for flexibility and the inevitability of unexpected changes.
see if the process itself can be changed to be easier to follow.
Your productivity is now less important than the productivity of the whole team.
if you can’t communicate and listen to what other people are saying, your career growth from this point on will suffer.
Are there any manager behaviors that you know you hate?
Empathetic leaders can sometimes allow themselves to get sucked into an unhealthy closeness with their direct reports.
If your value to the team has shifted from the thing you’re good at (writing code) to the thing you don’t yet know how to do well (managing people), it can be tempting to treat your reports as if they should be mini-mes.
being a good leader means being good at delegating.
the best outcome of attempting a continuous feedback cycle is not necessarily the actual feedback generated, but rather that the effort forces you to start paying attention to the individuals on your team.
If you can’t use a concrete example to support a point, ask yourself if the point is something you should be communicating in the review.
Forcing yourself to be specific will steer you away from writing reviews based on underlying bias.
people are uncomfortable being told they merely meet expectations,
The important thing for you to start doing now that you’re in management is to learn how the game is played at your company.
There are fewer opportunities for people to show the kind of leadership or breadth of impact needed to get promoted as they become more senior.
Many companies expect you to be acting at the next level before you get promoted to it.
leaders in this role are capable of identifying the most high-value projects and keeping their team focused on these projects.
Technical instincts honed over years of doing the job are very important for guiding that process.
It’s a struggle to figure out how to stay technical as you transition to management.
Humans, by and large, feel good when they set small goals and meet them regularly.
While the product manager is responsible for the product roadmap, and the tech lead is responsible for the technical details, you are usually accountable for the team’s progress through each of these elements.
