? Want to be an Engineering Manager? (archive)

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I’m gonna keep this short and to the point because who reads long paragraphs of text? I don’t.

  1. Let go of coding. Your job is not to code anymore. Your job is to make sure your team is doing their best at coding. LET IT GO. Code at home on your IoT cat feeder or something.
  2. Your job is to learn to read humans via body language, things that are said, company social networks, social engineering, politics. Your job is to predict and manage conflict and trauma before the flood hits.
  3. Stop assuming everyone is the same privileged clone and realize there are different personalities and they can’t be all resolved with the same solution. That’s called being lazy and if you are doing that, stop being a manager. Go back to coding.
  4. Look at your team’s salaries and levels and do a regular checkup to ensure everyone is getting what they deserve. Evaluations that are made to arrive at these numbers are subjective-as-fuck so do your best to measure it against each individual’s strengths and weaknesses as it pertains to project and team dynamics, not comparing it to another person on the team as a justification to punish/reward them. DON’T BE A BIASED, HE’S-MY-BUDDY-SO-I-GIVE-HIM-RAISES-ALL-THE-TIME manager. If you are, clean out your desk.
  5. Have regular, scheduled one-on-ones with your team even if you have nothing work-related to talk about. Talk about their favorite movie or concert or how they broke their iPhone 6 by dropping it in a toilet.
  6. You can’t possibly be good at managing after having more than a certain number of people on your team. It’s impossible to give the same amount of focus for everyone when you only work 35-40 hours a week. This limit varies for each manager. Know your limit. Be good to your team.
  7. Get ready for politics. Be aware of what you say and who you say it to.
  8. A lot of things will be outside of your control. Realize your limits in accepting this lack of control.
  9. Understand the social systems that work within your team — do certain people work well together? DON’T SPLIT THEM UP THEN. Let them blossom into helping the company improve by working together but also encourage others to join in.
  10. Senior team members should be expected to spend half their time mentoring and helping others on the team get better. Their job isn’t just to be the code hero bottleneck.
  11. Last but not least, I hope you love empathy, understanding people and not being a micromanager. Nobody wants to be told how to shit and when to shit.