An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management

by Will Larson

e.g., architecture groups in which the members write little code.

Start with the conclusion. Particularly in written communication,

Frame why the topic matters.

Everyone loves a narrative. Another aspect of framing the topic is providing a narrative of where things are, how you got here, and where you’re going now.

Prepare for detours. Many forums will allow you to lead your presentation according to plan, but that is an unreliable prediction when presenting to senior leadership.

Answer directly.

Deep in the data. You should be deep enough in your data that you can use it to answer unexpected questions.

Derive actions from principles.

Discuss the details. Some executives test presenters by diving into the details,

Prepare a lot; practice a little.

Make a clear ask.

Quarterly time retrospective. Every quarter, I spend a few hours categorizing my calendar from the past three months to figure out how I’ve invested my

Ultimately, you have to prioritize long-term success,

Finish small, leveraged things. If

Stop doing things.

Identify some critical work that you won’t do, recategorize that newly unstaffed work as organizational risk,42 and then alert your team and management chain that you won’t be doing it.

Decouple participation from productivity. As you grow more senior, you’ll be invited to more meetings, and many of those meetings will come with significant status. Attending those meetings can make you feel powerful,

Hire until you are slightly ahead of growth. The best gift of time management that you can give yourself is hiring capable folks, and hiring them before you get overwhelmed.

Calendar blocking. Creating blocks of time on your calendar is the perennial trick of time management: add three or four two-hour blocks scattered across your week to support more focused work.

Getting administrative support. Once you’ve exhausted all the above tools and approaches, the final thing to consider is getting administrative support.

don’t fall into the trap of believing that being busy is being productive,

consistency is a precondition of fairness.

environments that tolerate frequent exceptions are not only susceptible to bias but are also inefficient.

“Work the policy, not the exceptions.”

If you find yourself writing constraints that don’t actually constrain choice, it’s useful to check if you’re dancing around an unstated goal that’s limiting your options.

management as, at its core, a moral profession. We have the opportunity to create an environment for those around us to be their best, in fair surroundings.

The Golden Rule6 makes a lot of sense. Give everyone an explicit area of ownership that they are responsible for. Reward and status should derive from finishing high-quality work. Lead from the front, and never ask anyone to do something you wouldn’t.

“With the right people, any process works, and with the wrong people, no process works.”

As a leader, you can’t run from problems; engage ’em head-on.

mantra for guiding decisionmaking: do the right thing for the company, the right thing for the team, and the right thing for yourself,

Most managers have significantly more work they could be doing than they’re able to do. This will probably be your status quo for the rest of your career, and it’s important to prioritize your time on important things, and not simply on whatever happens to end up on your calendar.

Be kind to the candidate. Ensure that all interviewers agree on the role’s requirements. Understand the signal your interview is checking for (and how to search that signal out). Come to your interview prepared to interview. Deliberately express interest in candidates. Create feedback loops for interviewers and the loop’s designer. Instrument and optimize as you would any conversion funnel. You

Almost every unkind interviewer I’ve worked with has been either suffering from interview burnout after doing many interviews per week for many months or has been busy with other work to the extent that they have started to view interviews as a burden rather than a contribution. To fix that, give them an interview sabbatical for a month or two, and make sure that their overall workload is sustainable before moving them back into the interview rotation.

Being unprepared is, in my opinion, the cardinal interview sin, because it shows a disinterest in the candidate’s time,

I’ve personally found that customization matters less than I assumed, because people mostly choose to respond based on their circumstances, not on the quality of your note.

Crisp level boundaries reduce ambiguity when considering whether to promote an individual across levels.

Calibrations fall soundly in the unenviable category of things that are terrible but have no obvious replacement.

Recruiting rare humans. For entirely great reasons, people want the first hires they make into a new role to be strong role models for the entire function. This often leads to a proliferation of requirements until it’s impossible for any candidate to pass the bar.

Don’t hire for potential. Hiring for potential is a major vector for bias,

Continuing to incorporate those into the interview rubrics is an essential way to reduce bias creeping in.