
Things I've learned transitioning from engineer to engineering manager - gregdoesit
http://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/things-ive-learned-transitioning-from-engineer-to-engineering-manager/
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brogrammernot
As an engineering manager, you'll need to put company first, team second and
your team members third.

I disagree with this a ton. The best managers I've had flipped #1 and #2. When
your team is performing, the company profits. Far too often I've seen the
manager put the company way ahead of the team, and that leads to attrition
within your team or a major lack of motivation.

~~~
mikekchar
I think this is a red herring all the way. Before you think about this
problem, the first thing you have to ask yourself is: "Why do we have
managers"?

Let's start a thought experiment. We'll start a company with one person. What
will that person do? Manage? Of course not. There is nothing to manage,
because there is only one person. Instead, although they have to plan and
prioritise their work, if they aren't actually spending most of their time
working, then nothing will get accomplished.

What if we have 2 people? Should we make one person a manger and have the
other person do the work? Of course not. The manager will have virtually
nothing to do while the working person will be overwhelmed. Although you may
shift some responsibilities depending on who likes to do what, or who has
various skills, unless both people are working then you will have lots of
problems.

At what point do we need a manager? Well, we need a manager when the
communication overhead and day-to-day chores impacts development. We only need
that manager when there is enough work that they will be able to spend almost
all of their day doing that work.

So what will they do? Basically anything that is stopping the workers from
getting their job done. If there is a problem with communication, then the
manager needs to organise things so that everybody has the information they
need. If there is a lack of prioritisation, then the manager needs to
prioritise/plan the work. If there is conflict on the team, the manager must
find ways to resolve the conflict. I'll stop here as there isn't much point
enumerating all the things a manager must manage.

The point is that everything a manager does is a result of coordinating large
numbers of people or disparate information sources. Their job is to
coordinate, prioritise, reduce conflict and communicate so that the workers
can concentrate on getting their work done. The manager is there to "take one
for the team" so that the team doesn't get embroiled in drama, trivia, or
complications.

Getting back to the original problem: "you'll need to put the company first,
team second and your team members third". Sorry to be rude, but that's just
naive. Your function is not, through force of your will, to make all the
workers do what the company wants. Your job is to coordinate information and
reduce conflict so that the members can be successful. Your job would not
exist if you did not have team members or teams.

And as impolite as this is, I can't finish without asking managers to
contemplate the following: Is there more or less drama due to your actions?
Are you demanding team members organise information for you, or are you
organising information for the team members? Are you resolving conflict as it
occurs, or are you creating conflicts in order to get your way? Do you ask
your team to jump through hoops in order to solve a political problem, or do
you jump through hoops to solve political problems for your team?

As an engineering manager, you can not succeed if the team does not succeed.
It is true that your team can succeed for short periods even if some team
members do not succeed, but it is an unsustainable condition. If your team
members are not successful, then you have failed. <\- Notice the full stop.

~~~
PeterisP
One way to look at "why do we have managers" is the decentralized "feudal
management".

Everything starts from the owner ("king") who then delegates things to
managers at various levels (starting from the board and executives) who then
do their thing and either manage tasks, people and processes directly or
delegate them further to lower level managers.

In a decentralized approach, if you need a small task done, you can hire me,
give me some resources (money, workspace, equipment, whatever), and expect
some results - but mostly leave me to myself. If you want more results, that's
going to take more resources - and at some point these resources go from a
salary and a desk to a budget and headcount, but in a larger manner, nothing
changes; you have given me resources (more of them) and need results (more of
them), and you can stop worrying about the details of how these results are
achieved. In this approach, the engineering manager role becomes something
like a CEO/COO of a small development shop doing custom software for their
customers - and the main significant difference between this shop being
internal or external is the (lack of) legal contracts required.

------
jeffdavis
"As an engineering manager, you'll need to put company first, team second and
your team members third."

I wouldn't make this into a priority list -- whether it's right or wrong, I
think it's the wrong mindset. Priority lists are hard to apply in practice
because it's rarely clear who might be losing from a given decision.

For one thing, putting the "company" first is a little vague and hard to
internalize. Is that the CEO? The long-term success? The stock price? With a
"company" first mindset, you'll probably fall into some political games.

Instead, you should start with the actual users of the product and keep that
in view. This will help solve the problem where your team executes on a
project perfectly and then nobody wants it, or it gets canceled for some
mysterious reason. It will also lead you to what's best for the company, make
the team successful, and (hopefully) lead to rewards for the team members.

~~~
mmcnl
This 100%. The customers are completely out of scope in this article. They are
are essential. You're not engineering stuff just because the CEO of the
company likes it. You're doing it because you can add value to your customers.
This should always be priority #1, because otherwise you might as well drop
everything and go home.

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jpatokal
> A couple of months ago I moved from a senior engineer position to being an
> engineering manager

There's some useful advice here for newbie managers (manage your time!), but
as a manager, most of _really_ important things you work with -- like building
teams and careers -- operate on much longer timescales than a few months.
Looking forward to the next update 5 years down the line.

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lordnacho
> As an engineering manager, you'll need to put company first, team second and
> your team members third.

Remember that a "company" is an imagined reality that works because a lot of
people believe it. "Team" is as well, but fewer people need to believe it.
(Compare those to "nation").

Your team members are real though.

~~~
SomeStupidPoint
What's an ant colony then -- imaginary or real? And if imaginary, who is doing
the imagining?

I'm not sure I understand your position.

~~~
jo909
You see thousands of individual ants, and call that colony.

What if I went around the forest and picked one ant out of thousands of
colonies and put them all together? Will you still call this a colony? Even if
they begin fighting each other?

I wouldn't. It's the behavior of the ants that makes them a colony, which
isn't a "real" physical thing.

~~~
SomeStupidPoint
Isn't the fact that you can't pick a thousand random ants and trick me into
thinking they're a colony evidence that there's more to there being a colony
than mere imagination on my part?

Unless you're alleging that the ants conceive of a colony, the colony is a
machine made out of pieces -- it's like saying a puzzle doesn't have a
physical reality when clearly it does: a thousand random pieces don't make a
puzzle, and that distinction lies in the physical reality of the system under
examination.

In so much as it makes sense to talk about ants, and not clumps of mobile
cells or automata of particles, it makes sense to talk about ant colonies.
After all, it's the behavior of the particles that appears to make the ant an
entity -- the ant isn't real, only the particle behavior.

Your point seems to depend on those entities which we can immediately
recognize as entities being more real than other kinds of entities, but that
has no logical basis and is an outright appeal to emotion.

~~~
jo909
Imagination is certainly not the right word here. But we seem to agree that
"there's more" to a colony than just the physical reality of many thousands of
ants in a pile. I can't touch it or extract it from the pile of ants.

If I take half the ants, do I still have a colony? If they now form two
colonies, where did the second one come from? How many times can I divide the
ants and still have a colony? Where did the colony go if I no longer have one?

Of course "all the ants that form the colony" is a real physical thing, just
the same as all the cells that form the ant, but that's arguing in circles.
You need to have the "idea" of the larger (or smaller) entity in the first
place to be able to point at it.

And it's not the point of the OP anyway, because the ants certainly themselves
don't have any concept of the whole colony and don't freely decide if they are
one or not. That's just an external observation and classification we made
after the fact.

~~~
SomeStupidPoint
Late reply, but --

My point is that what makes the colony distinct from the pile is the
chemicals, genomic structure, etc that the ants share and are in their
environment -- things which all themselves are quite physical. That collection
of shared structure between the ants and environmental factors creates a
system distinct but made from the ants. Corporations have similar physical
components that their constituent humans interact with.

It seems to be begging the question to assume that humans require imagining
the corporation but ants do not need to imagine the colony -- it's simply a
dynamic system/entity in its own right that happens to have constituent
"ants". (Similar in nature to the relationship between cells and animals.)

~~~
jo909
Everything at some point has a physical manifestation that can be broken down
further and further until we explain things with (according to many
physicists) strings.

Every thought, idea, dream or lie could be described as neurotransmitters
moving between neurons, but that's very rarely the level of detail we use.

Yes, corporations have physical manifestations. And if we use a formal or
legal definition, you could maybe break that down to some database entry at
some government branch or paperwork in a cabinet etc. Very real and physical.

But then I could hack the database and insert a new company and fake the
paperwork, and arguably the result is not a real company. Or delete a real
company and destroy the paperwork, but arguably the company will still exist.

If we imagine I could create or delete a company perfectly in all its physical
aspects, documents, electronic records, inventory, products etc - but not
modify anybodies thoughts or memories -, you would be very clearly be able to
tell if the company is "real" or not.

If nobody knows about it ("believes" it exists) and nobody works for it, it's
not real. The office, machines, computers and a bunch of (fake) employment
contracts do not result in anything if nobody shows up.

If everybody still believes it exists and just continues to work, they might
need a few new staplers and other things, and at some point get the paperwork
corrected.

------
nick0garvey
"A Manager's Path" is outstanding on this topic:
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XP3GJ7F/](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XP3GJ7F/)

Definitely recommended if you are considering making the transition - or if
you are like me and just want a better understanding of how your manager
works.

~~~
SomeStupidPoint
If we're on books, I'll always suggest "Up the Organization" by Townsend. It's
a classic for a reason.

[https://www.amazon.com/Up-Organization-Corporation-
Stifling-...](https://www.amazon.com/Up-Organization-Corporation-Stifling-
Strangling/dp/0787987751)

------
andy_ppp
I'm always shocked when people end up not knowing things like what they are
being asked for by the company if they become an Engineering manager.

Here you go, the simple formula for your management success: it's more
software, of better quality, made faster, for less money.

~~~
milesvp
Bonus points if you make sure you team is building the right thing. Sadly it's
too easy to spend lots of dev time on something that will never make the
company any money.

~~~
hasenj
I don't think that's a bonus point. That's the most important point.

Better to spend more time and money building the right thing than wasting time
building the wrong thing.

~~~
wruza
Too bad for me that this thread started at monday morning, so I can't put my
concerns here in a detail and take a feedback. In short, I failed our small's
company big project last year, being pushed to top-and-only engineering
manager for the first time, now instead of being fired in shame or simply
leaving, I do quick and dirty project that will keep us afloat for awhile (it
is ready after two months of hacking, deadline today). I can not understand
now how good software and success are related, because it seems that no one
really wants or needs it (the former, of course). I was like team-oriented,
human-oriented all the time, project-oriented, but not for company/success. My
current guess is that success is success and engineering is engineering. I'm
not that kind of both worlds person, and I don't actually like success,
because my inner engineer contradicts what I've done under time pressure. I
better not finish my side projects than allow them to become _that_. Most
confusing point is that requirements are mostly met, and now I have lot of
time to polish it and get back to the main goal.

It's not an official advice to anyone, but if you see what can be improved in
your workplace, then go improve, but blindly accepting a position may throw
you in your personal hell. All many years before I went that route, invested
my time in tools and approaches and it paid back making me and my coworkers
happy to do our job. High-stake goals do not work that way, and I can't
clearly see what you can achieve by breaking yourselves core. For me it seems
like a path to personal failure while making some "dirty" money. Reality
strikes back.

This is my personal anecdote on this subtopic, ymmw.

~~~
blauditore
Holy shit, that's sad.

------
dominotw
I've hit mid-30's and I am still an individual contributor. People tell me
ageism be real and I would face the music real soon.

How do people become managers, should I just tell my manager that I want to be
a manager now. Would he be thratntened that I want his job ?

~~~
andy_ppp
You have options...

Join a rapidly growing organisation and help other people to do their jobs
better. You will be a manager before you know it.

Alternatively move company and apply to be a manager and probably say you had
more management experience than you really do. I'm sure at 35 you've had to
coach some people to be better and do interviews, these can be highlighted.

Do not tell your boss you want his job/to be a manager because anything you
ever do that makes her feel threatened from then on will be noted and used
against you. People move companies to gain good promotions for a reason.

~~~
robterrell
> apply to be a manager and probably say you had more management experience
> than you really do.

That's not great advice. Don't lie to get a job.

> Do not tell your boss you want his job/to be a manager

Every company I've worked at has needed more great engineering managers.
There's more than enough work, and anyone who says "I want to help" is my
hero.

Where I work, when engineers say they want to become managers, we give them
gently escalating management responsibilities, enroll them in management
training, and give them a mentor for guidance. And later we check to make sure
it's still something they want -- it's truly a different job, so they should
be able to say "not for me" and go back to being an IC.

~~~
sidlls
I think this very much depends on the organization. Many managers are
political creatures who view any desire by ICs to move up the non-technical
ladder as a direct threat to them. Take the anecdote for what it is, but I've
experienced that personally, and have had friends who have as well. It doesn't
necessarily end well. In my case, I started seriously considering a
constructive termination suit until I finally found alternate employment (it
took almost three months--I wasn't in the Bay Area at the time).

My current employer is more like what you describe, however, and I'm thankful
for it.

------
sidlls
> As an engineering manager, you'll need to put company first, team second and
> your team members third.

I think a good manager sees the second two as an important factor in putting
the company first. Demoralized teams are bad for the company.

------
z3t4
Why do software companies promote people to managers !? All those years of
experience wasted. And he still doesn't know what he's supposed to do besides
putting the company's needs before it's employees.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
What's the alternative? Having people who don't know how to create software
managing the creation of software?

~~~
z3t4
I think an experienced developer is worth much more then an inexperienced
manager. And I also believe in flat organizations when it comes to software.

------
cakedoggie
> senior "software" engineer position to being an "software" engineering
> manager

