Engineering Management for the Rest of Us

by Sarah Drasner

Leadership is challenging: where your work used to be about you and what value you brought to a team, your work is now about enabling everyone around you.

“The fact that you’re worried that you’re not a good manager is a key part of being a good manager.”

People are not pure functions; they have all sorts of interesting side effects.

If you pay attention, you can see how a person’s values dictate their behavior and ethics.

conflicts are the result of a misalignment of values,

The act of sharing values can also have a side effect of building trust and vulnerability on a team.

“All criticism, attack, insults, and judgments vanish when we focus attention on hearing the feelings and needs behind a message.”

If you don’t have alignment with your values at a base level, you will eventually burn out because, let’s face it, management work is very tough. You matter too.

When you speak about your team, include yourself in the statement.

When your team succeeds in something, though, praise them and leave yourself out of it.

“They really pulled this project over the line, despite the incredibly tight project timeline. Everyone showed up and was driven throughout the engagement. They did a fantastic job.”

“I didn’t recognize how tight this turnaround was, and I failed to prioritize the team’s time well. I need to reconvene with everyone so we can come up with a better plan.”

A company is composed of groups, but those groups can only be successful if they’re working together, not if they are protecting their own group at all costs.

The leadership team is also a team, and should also be treated as your team. How you speak about this team is equally important.

as a manager, our job is to try as much as we can to drive balance and clarity.

if you don’t own your involvement in the leadership group, you can demoralize your team and make them feel distrustful of other parts of the company. This will then cause folks to demonize other teams and their initiatives, which (as we’ve discussed) is ultimately unhealthy.

Saying “we” holds you accountable to your team for leadership decisions that you are a part of, which is how it should be.

“The leadership team decided that we need to ship at least three features this quarter, so I guess that’s what we have to figure out how to do.” versus: “One of the key OKRs (objectives and key results) this quarter is that we as a company need to double the signups to our platform. We’ve done some calculations that show we can almost certainly get there by shipping three features, so let’s all talk about what we can do within our group to make that possible. If you’re curious, we can chat through what initiatives other groups are doing to support this as well.” The first is not just passive, but demotivating. I have made the mistake of using this approach when I wanted to be liked by my employees and for them to think of me as a peer. But we’re not peers. I have a responsibility to them.

If you realize you’ve made a mistake while in a meeting, it’s possible to backtrack and clarify, revisiting the issue and taking ownership of it. Or if the conversation has moved on, you can address this when you speak about next steps. In situations where things didn’t go well, clarify that you are ultimately the accountable party, and you will take responsibility for outcomes.

Our job as engineering managers is to create an environment where people can feel like they’re getting their best work done.

The culture and morale on your team is a large part of your responsibility.

I’ve long felt that happiness wasn’t just “nice to have” at a job. I’ve noticed over many years that the teams that are able to express joy and humor together are often the most product...

Happiness at work isn’t some “hippie” concept. It’s also connected to the bottom line.

As managers, we can’t actually create flow state. That’s up to the individual. But we as managers should create an environment where flow state can exist as much as possible.

A few conditions need to be met for your engineers to get into flow state in their work: You are aligned on the base premises of the work. Your work is challenging, but not impossible. You feel a sense of togetherness with your team and peers, that you’re all building something together and have each other’s backs. Your moral values are not at odds with the work at hand. You feel respected. You get fair and timely feedback on your tasks. This does not necessarily have to be human feedback. It can also come in the form of compilation success, tests passing, or PRs (pull requests) going through. Upon completing tasks and working hard for the company, you get fair pay, bonuses, promotions, and raises. You feel a loss of sense of self when performing your work. You are doing something for the sake of the task, not for politics or to be right. Rather you are doing the best work possible for the best possible outcomes. As such, you care more about continuous improvements than your own ego. You feel like people believe in you and what you’re working on.

Can you trust the teams you lead to have autonomy to drive outcomes? You hired them for their expertise. Are there ways you can allow them to bring that out?

In the times that you felt completely connected to your work, where everything else floated away, what were some commonalities of those events that you might be able to isolate? Your work was challenging, but not impossible. You were likely connected, in part, to the goal of the task. You did the work regardless of outside influence or reward. The act of doing the work was a reward unto itself. In recent years, a lot of studies have been done about intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. Intrinsic rewards come when you do something for the sake of doing it, and extrinsic rewards come when you complete a task to get outside validation. The book Drive isolates each type of reward and shows how those motivated by intrinsic working habits and desires are more productive over the long haul.

A person will struggle to reach flow state if they are not compensated fairly. Otherwise they will be consumed with the inequity, and it will be challenging for them to focus on the task.

Let’s say Kiran says he has felt lonely lately and that he really doesn’t feel connected to his colleagues. This is a time when it may seem like individual trust needs to be worked on, but maybe Kiran is giving you a hint that team trust, for everyone, needs to be worked on. Perhaps it’s time for a team off-site? It might be nice to spend a little time getting to know one another.

Some activities that I’ve done during an off-site gathering that have worked well: Have everyone on the team do a short (five-minute) presentation on something that interests them, not work-related. Do an escape room or play a game. Do a values exercise, and discuss how you like to receive feedback. Eat the same food together. If you’re remote, you can order something frozen that’s delivered in advance to everyone. This gives the team the opportunity to talk about the tastes and smells. (While being mindful of food preferences and allergies.) Have everyone talk about something a bit personal: When they were small, what did they want to be when they grew up? If they could have any superpower, what would it be and why? What was their greatest challenge growing up?

Here are some ways I’ve implemented the undoing effect: Check in with facts. Sometimes we react to an event without checking that we understand exactly what’s going on. Sometimes our brain protects us by leading us to a negative outcome so that we might prepare for it. This is very unhelpful when trying to get a team on the same page, because some members may feel misrepresented or attacked. My coach, Jessi, often reminds me of this as a tool. It can be so helpful to revisit the literal facts involved in a given circumstance.

Find and rally around the positive. Since your brain is actively pulling you and others into fear mode, looking for the positive elements of a situation and saying them out loud can help balance what’s naturally imbalanced. Neurobiologists find that because of our brain’s mirror neurons, even introducing one positive person to a group can raise the overall happiness of the team. When hiring, keep in mind that not everyone you hire has to be positive all the time, but it’s nice to have at least one person on the team to balance things, especially if others tend toward the negative.

Reject negative premises. As a manager, you will sometimes have to counter paranoid or negative views on a situation.

Review consequences. Most of the time, the consequences of an action are not as dire as people make them out to be. Announcing that “Everyone will be fired!” or “The system will implode!” is not very productive. What are the real risks? State them clearly, or let someone else voice them, so that everyone is on the same page about what’s at stake. Then you can sort out what the biggest risks are and what aren’t really risks at all.

In dire situations, step away. If you have extremely volatile people on your team who are stuck in a bad loop, you may have to reconvene at a later time, and meet with them 1:1 to get on the same page. Conversations should remain as open as they can be, but there can be times where meeting as a group is no longer productive, and everyone needs time away to cool off. Use this tool infrequently and not as a default practice, but use in situations where things feel especially off track.

Psychologists suggest a ratio of negative to positive interaction that humans can tolerate before they feel demoralized. This ratio, called the “Losada coefficient,”2 suggests a 2.9 times positive-to-negative interaction (i.e. praises: reproach), with a 6:1 ratio for optimal happiness. The ratio may differ depending on the group or individual, but it’s worth keeping in mind with our teams.

“Students who were told to think about the happiest day of their lives right before taking a standardized math test outperformed their peers.

You need to actively create a good culture and team morale; it’s part of your job!

At first she did terrific work. Time after time, I cautioned her that she might be trying to do too much, but I would stand back and be amazed at what she did. But after a while, her progress slowed. The boulders left on her plate were big ones. She started to freeze at the enormity of the task. For a little while, that was okay. After all, she had consistently been bringing in incredible work, and no one should be expected to keep up such a pace forever. But after a little while, I began to get worried. She seemed a bit more shy than usual, and I could tell her lack of progress was getting to her. “You know we don’t have to get all of this done, right?” I said. “Yeah, I know,” she said. But I could tell it wasn’t really me she was trying to make amends with. It was herself and her own ambition. “Okay, how about this?” I offered. “Some of these projects are fairly large in scope. How about we break these down?” I saw a glimmer in her eye that I’d not seen in a while. For the next hour, we worked to break down one of her larger tasks into smaller bits. We gave her the tiniest pieces to focus on that week. Lo and behold, she completed all of these small parts and came back the next week rejuvenated. Shipping some small parts helped her feel that the rest was doable. Which of course it was. For someone who might be trying to grow, breaking tasks down and focusing on the smallest, most doable bits first can help a ton.

I have never seen employees more demoralized than when they’re unsure where their career is headed and whether their title or compensation is fair. It’s frustrating, exhausting, and can lead to burnout. It’s also incredibly distracting. Who can get their job done when they have no clue if what they’re doing is valued?

I thought I had set up for her didn’t really serve her well for the long haul. For example, I didn’t teach her how to advocate for herself or how to navigate the system. I vowed never to make that mistake again. This is tough! If you’re strong and care about your team as people, it can feel unnatural to teach someone to advocate for themselves instead of moving things out of their way.

The point is to care. Are you teaching them the things they need to learn? Are they really growing under you? Feeling like you’re protecting someone at all costs can also lead to your own ego trip, which threatens progress.

Try to think through what skills someone needs to succeed without you. Teach those skills incrementally. Sure, this advice is easy to say, but it’s really hard to do when you’re in the thick of things. Spend some time thinking through ways you can inject that teaching into everyday work and interactions.

The first part of building healthy teams is admitting you won’t know everything, and this may be a time where you need to listen more than you talk.

Clarifying the value of an employee’s tasks can be incredibly useful for someone who may be an over-performer but are burning out.

One point is critical: If you successfully guide employees on this journey, you need to give them the promotion at the end.

I try to set a reminder in our 1:1 doc to revisit the 30/90 plan in about a month.

If you see a large enough delta between what you both committed to and what work is being done, it can be tempting to attribute this delta to laziness. A lot of things are misattributed to laziness that have some other root cause, and yet they appear externally as laziness. If someone isn’t getting their work done, please do your best to explore further with them before writing them off. If you say someone is “lazy,” that is an immovable character assessment and absolves you as a manager from figuring out their motivations, potential misalignments, or challenging external factors that might be impacting their work.

Try to realign by considering the following: What are their personal goals? What are the company needs? Are we able to address the above two with the work being done? Ask what they think we could do together to make further progress. Restate the expected outcomes and clarify that they can reach those outcomes however they think is best, allowing them to iterate on their tactical plans if necessary.

If you’re in management long enough, you will likely encounter someone who is harder to manage than others. This is natural! Please don’t feel like a failure, I know it can be isolating and a bit scary to be in this situation. Understand that supporting a person is about the person, not ourselves, and they may just find a better match elsewhere: in a different department, or even a different company. It happens. Let it go.