An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management

by Will Larson

Newer managers, often in their first couple of years: Only manage down. This often manifests in building something your team wants to build, but which the company and your customers aren’t interested in. Only manage up. In Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth,11 she writes, “All power comes from the Earth.” In management, power comes from a healthy team. Some managers focus so much on following their management’s wishes that their team evaporates beneath them. Never manage up. Your team’s success and recognition depend significantly on your relationship with your management chain. It’s common for excellent work to go unnoticed because it was never shared upward. Optimize locally. Picking technologies that the company can’t support, or building a product that puts you in competition with another team. Assume that hiring never solves any problems. When you’re behind, it can be tempting to spend all of your time firefighting and neglect hiring, but if your business is growing quickly, then eventually you hire or burn out. Don’t spend time building relationships. Your team’s impact depends largely on doing something that other teams or customers want, and getting it shipped out the door. This is extraordinarily hard without a supportive social network within the company. Define their role too narrowly. Effective managers tend to become the glue in their team, filling any gaps. Sometimes that means doing things you don’t really want to do, in order to set a good example. Forget that ...