Engineering Management for the Rest of Us

by Sarah Drasner

“I have a kanban board for my personal life to-do list and a cron job that empties my Done column and texts it to me every week, so I feel accomplished.”

Saying no feels strange and uncomfortable at first, but is an act of courage on behalf of your team, in an indirect way. This is a hard job. Take care of yourself, it’s the best way to take care of your team.

you don’t have to answer someone right away. You can ask them for some time to reflect and decide. I typically time-box an answer so that I don’t forget or procrastinate

Saying no when someone initially asks, not down the line, is important. It may feel bad or strange at the time to say no, but consider this: If you say no at the get-go, you’re incurring less damage down the line.

For example, “Let’s optimize our time by meeting once every two weeks. We can catch up via email or chat if things come up in the interim.”

If they know what outcomes you’re looking for, and you both align on what’s possible, then the team can be trusted to drive those outcomes as they see fit, and you don’t need to be close to the metal on how they execute every step. This will become a more and more crucial skill to learn the higher you go in management.

For a new manager, it can be tough to understand that your job has changed and, though you may need some focus time, focus is not your primary function anymore. Meetings are now your job. Coordination is your job. Your job is to be interruption-driven so your team can stay focus-driven. This means you shouldn’t be protecting yourself too much from meetings.

If your team feels out to sea because you protect your time, you’re likely not doing your job well.

waiting too long to have a vacation, or skipping vacations entirely, doesn’t actually allow you to perform at your best. You need rest. It also sends signals to your team, like it or not, that it’s improper for them to take the time they need. It’s hard for them to know for sure that they’re okay taking time off unless they see you do it first.

You can cultivate a growth mindset by identifying what goals you want to accomplish and slowly work toward them. You can also remind yourself from time to time of the value of your work.

research shows that belief in your own ability can be a better predictor of future success than previous job performance.

Believing in someone else’s potential can impact their performance.

The Invisibilia podcast aired an episode titled “How to Become Batman.”23 In this episode, scientists took similarly performing rats, but told human handlers, “This rat is slow” and then ran it through a race. The rat in question then underperformed. The rats that humans were told were stellar, ran faster. It turns out that the small ways that the humans were handling these rats changed based on these preconceived notions of them. And it actually affected the rats’ self-confidence!

the Pygmalion effect24 is the name for the concept of how high expectations from those around us lead to better performance, and low expectations lead to the opposite, becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.