[HN Gopher] Mistakes I've Made as an Engineering Manager ___________________________________________________________________ Mistakes I've Made as an Engineering Manager Author : sebg Score : 143 points Date : 2021-02-21 18:51 UTC (4 hours ago) (HTM) web link (css-tricks.com) (TXT) w3m dump (css-tricks.com) | amirkdv wrote: | > _Mistake 1: Thinking people give feedback the way they want to | receive it_ | | Yes, deciding _how_ to deliver feedback could be a nuanced, | delicate challenge. | | But a non-obvious related problem I've found is _whether_ to | deliver it at all. The mistake there being that people want or | can benefit from the feedback you think you would 've wanted, | were you in their position. | ubersync wrote: | > Years ago, I managed a woman who was bright, talented, capable, | and an all around pleasure. She was sort of new to the industry | and could come across as timid, so I did my best to be a poop | umbrella for her, fighting battles behind the scenes to set her | up for success. She was on a steady track to land a senior role. | | This is not the first time I have seen a woman doing favoritism | for another woman. The sad thing is even men are expected to | "help" and "protect" women. This reverse-sexism in tech industry | is rarely talked about because men usually don't make as much | noise as women when they feel discriminated against, because men | are expected to "man up". And, even when men talk or try to | complain the HR (usually filled with woman) rarely takes notice | of any such complaints from men. | shortandsweet wrote: | Ohhhh boy you're in for it now. I'd suggest a quick edit on why | you feel it is favoristism. | robin_reala wrote: | When we get to equality in representation and pay across | genders in the tech industry then maybe your argument might | have some merit. Until then... | shortandsweet wrote: | And we'll cancel and silence everyone's opinions and feelings | until that happens? | ubersync wrote: | Wage gap has been proven to be a myth. What exists is a | "earning gap". Men earn more because they put in longer | hours, on average. The only industry that has a demonstrably | huge wage gap is modeling (and porn), where female models | make orders of magnitude more money than male models. | | Regarding representation, no one is forcing women out of tech | industry. There are fewer women in tech, because fewer women | choose to study STEM in college. Also, why don't women ask | for "equal representation" in other industries which are | male-dominated like garbage collectors, sewage workers etc. | RulingWalnut wrote: | Women ABSOLUTELY ask for equality/equity in other | industries! | | Firefighting: https://www.powerdms.com/blog/women-in-the- | fire-service/ Sanitation: https://www.worldbank.org/en/news | /feature/2019/08/27/breakin... | | This took me literally 45 seconds of googling. | shortandsweet wrote: | Actually it's not a myth. Look up bureau of labor | statistics. Women clearly make less than men. I feel | something must be done to resolve compensation when | controlling for skills, experience, etc, gender alone | shouldn't result in lower pay. | | https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.htm | shortandsweet wrote: | Oops wrong link | | https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat39.htm | ubersync wrote: | Again, there is no difference in average hourly rate of | wage. Men make more money than women because men (on | average) work more hours a week as compared to women. | Also men take fewer days off (on average). Thats the | reason behind the mythical "wage gap". So, the correct | term for it is "earnings gap". | | In fact, the reverse is true for younger women. Younger | women make more money than younger men: | https://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/aug/29/women- | in-20s-e... | | edit: The updated link you provided tells average "weekly | earning", not an hourly wage rate. | shortandsweet wrote: | Read the data. Salary jobs don't get paid more for | working more. Paid vacation is the norm for | professionals. | | https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat39.htm | ubersync wrote: | > Salary jobs don't get paid more for working more. | | Incorrect. Many salary jobs pay for over-time (and again, | men are more likely to work over-time, on average). | mancerayder wrote: | >Mistake 3: Communicating something one time is enough | | I feel better reading this as I am known to repeat myself! | | It communicates what matters, separate from the reminder aspect | of the act. | mancerayder wrote: | Me: trying to stay hands-on and technical on all topics, which | first of all was impossible, and second which distracted me away | from the key managerial duties of keeping communication channels | flowing, projects on track, people unblocked, strategy devised, | and so forth. | | I don't know if anyone has alternative tips. I know people who do | all their hands-on stuff as managers on the weekends with private | projects so they can learn new tech (like k8s). | avel wrote: | I believe you cannot stay hands on and technical on | _everything_. You might have some specialties you are good at | from before becoming a manager, and have constructive input | there. The rest, you delegate to other, usually senior members | of the team. They will be better suited to do architectural | decisions and code reviews than you. | | In the end your senior developers will end up better developers | and better in technical stuff than you. And that is fine. | ram_rar wrote: | > She was on a steady track to land a senior role. Even after I | decided to leave the company, I let the next manager know this | person is track for a senior position in the next few months. | | Its very naive to think, that the manager replacing you will see | eye to eye with you. I have seen countless occasions, where the | engineer in the team who is ontrack for promotion doesnt get it, | because the management above has changed. | | While being in IC role, I never relied on the company to promote | me. Its better to jump ships than reestablish the relationship | with new manager. It takes same amount of work anyway. At least | jumping ship will give you much higher compensation. | shortandsweet wrote: | I really think we can all learn a ton by sharing our mistakes. I | wanted to implement this in the office but nobody would share. I | have no problem sharing now I've messed up but I'm also weird in | a lot of social respects. | hu3 wrote: | If you do sprints, schedule a 15 minutes meeting at the end of | the sprint called Sprint Review. That's when everyone is able | to say what went good and what went bad. | | It's a good time to have everyone's voice heard. We write it | all down in succinct phrases and compare to previous sprint | review. | duxup wrote: | >Mistake 3: Communicating something one time is enough | | I joined a company once where a particularly skilled engineer had | become a manager. She was very good at her job and I'm fairly | certain had something like 'perfect recollection'. | | We were in a meeting and she went on about how she was upset | people were doing a troubleshooting process wrong despite having | sent out a detailed email. | | Not wanting to do that thing wrong I searched my email, but | couldn't find it. I asked about it and she told me "Oh it was | before you joined us.". | | I had been with that team for two years... | | People tend to remember important things like it was yesterday, | but don't always realize that other people can only absorb so | many important things / don't always know how important it is... | and email is kinda a terrible way to communicate it too. Let | alone 2+ years earlier ;) | kwanbix wrote: | 100% agree. The problem of knowing too much. | | I recently joined a great team that has lots of different | services that do things. | | Some people explain to you how things using names of things you | don't know about, they don't realize that telling me and then | we get "info from dragon" means nothing to me. | ryanSrich wrote: | I'm always blown away when companies don't have a knowledge | base. Imo, if it's not written down, shared with me, and told | how important it is, then it's your fault. | | Email isn't your knowledge base. Slack isn't your knowledge | base (unless you're using a tool like Guru). | | Use Notion, use Roam, shit even organized GDocs can work. | There's no excuse to not have things written down, maintained, | and constantly shared. | cm2012 wrote: | I agree with Tafster. I've been a consultant for 6 years and | so I've seen dozens of knowledge bases and wikis. Some | companies even have great processes to fill them in. | | I have never, ever seen a company where those wikis are | actually read. | | One company I worked with had a very detailed weekly logging | of changes, important things etc. The goal was to keep other | teams informed of what each team was doing. It took many | times many hours a week to keep it up to date. When they | looked at the usage log, literally no one logged into to read | the stuff except when going into to upload their part. | etothepii wrote: | > I have never, ever seen a company where those wikis are | actually read. | | The problem with documentation is that it is the making of | it that creates most of the value. Like so many things the | value looks like duplication. | taftster wrote: | I respectfully disagree to an extent. I think most/all | documentation ends up rotting and being ignored. If you take | the time to write it down, it doesn't mean that others will | take the time to read it or refer to it. | | I think it's better to just continually verbalize any "core | values" with your team as you go day-to-day. Thinking that | you've written it down inside of an organized GDocs is not | much different than having sent it via email (the location to | retrieve it just changes). | carbocation wrote: | Not really a general counterpoint, but I do think that if | documentation is concise and useful enough so that | stakeholders keep it up to date, it can work. | | For example, I maintain a document that helps me keep track | of bioinformatics files and some of their quirks (which | files have two-line headers, etc). I do it for myself, but | this information is also referred to by dozens of people in | our group. | Kranar wrote: | This might be fine at a smaller company, but as you grow, | having people verbalize these things results in slight | variations that over time grow into very big | inconsistencies. | | Setting up MediaWiki and throwing it up on a Linode server | costs 20 bucks a month and can be deployed from a Docker | image in roughly 15-20 minutes. It can referenced by | everyone, anyone can contribute to it with a full audit of | changes, and it's easily searchable. | | I use it to document technical and non-technical things | like company policies, work flow processes, security | practices, coding style, pretty much anything. New | employees have a standardized on-boarding process that is | clearly documented step by step for them to get setup with | everything they need to start being productive by their | second day of working here. | | It's actually fairly low effort to do this and is a lot | easier than having a bunch of people have to remember God | knows what and when, or forgetting and then having to ask | someone else who may have a vague recollection of it. | | An authoritative source of knowledge that everyone has | access to and anyone can contribute to is worth setting up. | keithnz wrote: | from years of doing wiki documentation, document rot is | fine, if it rots, so be it. Most of the time I write the | docs for me but with a "getting started" frame of mind. On | our wiki there are a whole bunch of actively maintained | pages now that were initially seeded by myself or other | devs, and there's a bunch of dead pages which are | occasionally very useful , some of it is horribly dead. But | the active pages are great, they save everyone time. Main | thing is to not invest vast amounts of time to the docs, | don't spend time drawing diagrams unless its a photo of a | quick hand drawing, and just put in more effort as things | prove useful | harryf wrote: | There's some cognitive bias in which we assume that when we | regard some information as important, that anyone exposed to | that information will fully absorb it. | | The reality is - while learning how to communicate well is | hard, actually getting anyone to listen is many times harder. | | I used to joke that in any meeting with more than 4 people, at | any given time at least 1 person is day dreaming. | | And since mobile phones and social media all this has got many | times harder; attention spans are shorter and there's a higher | expectation that information should be somehow entertaining. | | These days communicating something simple like an important | date to 10+ people inside a company requires multi level | marketing; email, calendar invite, Slack, face to face time ... | use it all and still one of the 10 will somehow miss the | message. | jorblumesea wrote: | This is pretty solid advice, but very much basic EM feedback. The | really hard stuff are ideas such as... | | * How do you create a reality distortion field inside outside the | team. Bad managers just list accomplishments, great managers tell | a story. | | * How do you manage/remove toxic people, personalities and | influences and create a solid team culture | | * How do you translate the relatively rigid corporate structure | and objectives into flexibility and room to move for your team. | Until you're VP level, you actually don't have much freedom in | direction and a great manager will understand how to interpret | and reinterpret this for the reports. | | * How do you balance the relationship between business, | engineering and product. Can you walk the line between tech debt, | code quality and delivering? Can you have those conversations | business is never willing to have to convince them to allow eng | to pay down tech debt? | | * How do you unblock and accelerate your team without being a | micromanager. Do you regularly take a strategic view on pain | points and blockers for your team? | alphadevx wrote: | Wow that's a pretty easy going list. Just wait until you have to | fire a bad hire that you made, have an entire team quit after a | bad crunch, or have to lay off an entire team due to that | exciting startup just you joined going bust. | shortandsweet wrote: | Have you had that happen? | alphadevx wrote: | Yes and I could go on! Engineering management is brilliant | and rewarding, but also very demanding. | | I have made plenty of mistakes over 20+ years, and learned | the painful way. | | All of your problems are people problems, the tech parts are | much easier to manage. | vincentmarle wrote: | > All of your problems are people problems, the tech parts | are much easier to manage. | | This cannot be emphasized enough. I have seen lots of smart | engineers attempting to "architect" the engineering manager | role, while not being able to handle the people aspect at | all. | fma wrote: | I have an opportunity to apply (and be very competitive) | for manager positions that just opened up and this is the | part that scares me the most. I could (and likely will) be | managing a team of 9 college hires with 1 senior dev. Not a | great ratio but that's about what it is from the new teams | that were created. | | I can stay technical in my role as an individual | contributor and be content. IMHO I'd be more valuable to | the company in a leadership role...but also at the same | time not sure if I want to have to deal with it for a 10% | raise. | alphadevx wrote: | I'd always recommend you try it! The really brilliant | part about engineering leadership is mentoring, there is | nothing more rewarding than seeing one of your teams | succeed, or growing your own leaders and watching them | thrive autonomously. | | If it does not suit you in the end, your technical skills | will still be there as a fallback option. | | Wish you well. | flowerlad wrote: | These are not the toughest problems. Here's a tough one: managers | that compete with their employees for credit and rewards. Does | the company reward managers based on the total output of the team | they manage, or do they reward managers on their contribution to | the success? If the former, managers will try to hire the best, | and help their employees do the best work. If the latter managers | will not necessarily try to hire or retain the best, since they | are competing for rewards. | anotheryou wrote: | Or you have good high-ups that are just glad if you do a good | job and they don't have to intervene. | | Problems I struggle with sometimes: | | - Finding time for product management (including research) (PO | is my actual job title). | | - Difficult personalities (relatively I think I'm very good at | handling these, but trying to change someone instead of just | mitigating harm is hard). | | - Keeping non-full-stack devs busy. E.g.: The most urgent topic | is some DB migration and I need back-end people for it. I could | have front-end work on the next user facing feature in the | meantime, but they are blocked by back-end delivering the data. | (well front-end can mock the back-end in my example, but you | get the idea). | | - Balancing how well prepared or defined tasks have to be. | There are so many factors: Getting a good outcome / staying | agile / having the devs think along (no micro-management) / not | overburdening the dev / and maybe most importantly: not knowing | who will take the task because devs are on such different | levels. | brundolf wrote: | That may be an additional interesting problem, but why shoot | down the OP? I think the things it goes over are entirely | legitimate and important lessons-learned. | serverholic wrote: | This is hackernews. Instead of thoughtful comments on the | article, people prefer to make up an argument and then bitch | about that so they feel smart. | duxup wrote: | I think it is more people hear a topic that is wide ranging | and sort of riff off of it and discuss related and not so | related things. | | I think it is pretty normal even if a bit off the mark at | times. | dasil003 wrote: | That's not a hard problem, that's an easy problem for | leadership to solve (you explained the solution in half a | sentence), or an impossible problem for a line manager to | solve. | finikytou wrote: | Who do you think leadership listens to? the employees they | never talk to or the line managers they have weekly | discussions with? | | it happened to me recently. working for a manager that | literally took all the credit for all of my visible work, | taking 0 responsibility when the team was failing on projects | while he is the one who assigned juniors on complex projects | without any oversight. He obviously blamed his own team | members to upper management rather than taking responsibility | too. | | He recently got promoted while I am being asked to attend | trainings to get better at my job in order to be promoted | (While at the same time being qualified as a top achiever in | my yearly review...) | | Don't forget that no one will ever be on your side in a | company. You don't meet leadership. Your line manager does. | HR is not on your side never. | | So yes. The only way out is to kneel down and accept it. be | nice to the guy who takes credit and if you do it well enough | you might be the next he will promote. except if he brought | his friend to the company and this friend is competing with | you.... ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-02-21 23:00 UTC)