7 ms·

I think this post missed one extremely important point. I almost never see it in blog posts, and yet the successful heads of 100+ engineer organizations all kno

I think this post missed one extremely important point. I almost never see it in blog posts, and yet the successful heads of 100+ engineer organizations all know this. Find good managers! Or groom them. Whichever. Just make sure you have good managers. I see endless posts about recruiting, and I see tons of posts about engineering culture, but I almost never see posts from these same sources about the nitty gritty of how to evaluate and grow leadership and people management skills. Ironically, I see a lot of that from MBA programs. Actually getting good management in place is extremely hard to do and does more for talent retention than almost everything else. For every company blog post I've read that talks about scaling the organization, including Stripe, I also hear corresponding horror stories from friends and acquaintances who are leaving because they hate their manager and because their company isn't doing anything about it. Sure, it's relative, on the grand scale of managerial quality I'd wager that Stripe is on the right side of average, but I'd really like to see more focus on scaling leadership.

physcab 8y ago
This is honestly the best barometer of employee happiness. Managers who want to build political empires, don’t have their employees best interests at heart, who communicate poorly, who make questionable moral judgements, or push work down the pipe for the sake of doing work is what makes employees miserable. Companies who empower these types of managers are terrible to work for.
- ChrisCinelli 8y ago
  I also found out that there are a few bad "managers" that end up raising because they are popular with people and their bosses. They usually have a very high EQ. You can see a few people with little technical acumen, shallow knowledge of the latest trends, very bad on processes and no work ethic that still rise in some organizations. These people spend a lot of time "managing up" on a side and on the other side they are also nice with their employees. They help them move up the ladder and pay higher bonuses demanding less work than other bosses. It is hard to find even good employees give a bad review to somebody that give them extra money and make them work "comfortably".
  - ebiester 8y ago
    Here's the part of management that is hard to understand as an IC: 1/3rd of my job is "managing up," that is, getting my boss what they need to get their job done. This can be defining a hiring process, or writing part of a powerpoint deck or getting them the information they need to write it up for their presentation. 1/3rd of my job is "managing across," or working with other managers - the "shit shield" is often from other managers who have their own pain points and are trying to work through issues like whose team has to deal with this ill-defined goal that doesn't really belong in any of the teams but is important. (Or saying that it isn't important after delving into the issue!) Or it's identifying a department-wide problem and working with a small group to have a proposal to solve it. That leaves 1/3rd of the work on actually "managing down." That is mentoring, performance evaluation, conflict management, 1:1s. And if your team is hiring, you spend another block on that. Most of us can't work 60 hour weeks consistently. Are there bad managers? Sure! But some of what makes a good/bad manager is completely hidden. (I'd argue that it's a flaw in our organizational system in general - I'm starting to think we need more people whose job it is to organize the department as a system, and then have the engineering manager as a tech lead++.)
    - afarrell 8y ago
      What about separating the career manager role from the tech lead role. That lets you do things like have the person coaching an IC on how to produce estimates be a different person from the one requesting the estimate.
    - ChrisCinelli 8y ago
      I do not call defining a hiring process managing up. Hiring is part of creating a great team and in my own experience can take more than 1/2 of the manager time especially when you are "building a team from scratch" and you cannot delegate things like screening interviews to other people. Back to the "managing up" I was talking about in my previous comment. I have seen some people spending more than 1/2 of their time on it. The reason I put it in quotes is because sometimes is time spent on getting visibility, becoming "good friends", and even brown-nosing. For any employee it is vital to have a good relationship with their boss in order to maximize her impact and develop influence. But when building camaraderie with her boss becomes the primary activity, it tells you something about the culture that that person is reinforcing and people that is attracting. There is a difference between aiming to "create an alliance to get things done" and "develop a relationship to get recognized and promoted" Even if the two do not have to be mutual exclusive, the motivation for bad managers is predominantly in latter more than former. And what is an order of magnitude better for a company? Someone that looks more for having an impact or a person that looks more to their advancement on the corporate ladder?
amw-zero 8y ago
What does a “good manager” look like?
- ticmasta 8y ago
  Exactly. If I could find good managers couldn't I just find good employees? This seems like the answer to the first line question of "how do I scale an engineering organization?" but you are not at an addressable solution yet. It's valuable but not sufficient.
  - munchbunny 8y ago
    Not sure I understand the point you are making with your question?
- ChrisCinelli 8y ago
  I would focus on somebody that is able to lead, first. You manage things, you lead people. Management is about handling complexity. Leadership is about creating simplicity. I think the full answer to your question would deserve at least blog post ;-)
- inopinatus 8y ago
  You grasp that you're not the talent. The job is to facilitate and enable those that are. You are Brian Epstein, not John Lennon. Someone who brings their team achievable goals, and the resources they need, and then gets the hell out of their way. Someone who encourages leadership (in all its many forms) to come from within the team, and doesn't see it as a challenge to their authority. Someone who understands that respect is not magically granted by position. Someone willing to make decisions - sometimes tough ones - on behalf of the team, to communicate both with and on behalf of the team, and defend the team's integrity and autonomy. Someone who understands that communication starts with listening.
  - sonnyblarney 8y ago
    Managers are often senior technical leaders and in those cases are 'the talent' in some capacity.
ChrisCinelli 8y ago
Completely in agreement. Hire a bad leader when the company is growing and you risk one year later to have the whole company infested by all sort of people that you would not like to have around (managers included). Some companies completely screw up themselves because of this. Startups usually do not think about this early enough and when the founders realize what is going on is too late and the company culture is screwed. My favorite Steve Job's video on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQKis2Cfpeo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQKis2Cfpeo
- cakes 8y ago
  Especially if you witness it as an employee and run it up the chain as far as possible and it gets ignored. Having had good and bad in my career has saved me from realizing that this was happening and that I shouldn't sit idle but if I'm not idle and do something it becomes extremely disheartening to watch this happen (and then I leave when it becomes apparent that nothing will be done and I'm miserable under my manager)
  - ChrisCinelli 8y ago
    In a company with these kind of problems, if you try to run it up the chain, it usually gets "captured" very early on from allied powers of the bad guy. In a healthy company with the right "antibodies" in places, a bad apple has more chances of being caught before it spoils the whole bunch.
kylemh 8y ago
The difference between the few companies I've been at has been made to seem like a laying down in a valley versus standing atop a mountain now that I have a good manager.
arvinsim 8y ago
I agree with this. I have already worked as an individual contributor for 10 years. I have improved a lot technically because there are a lot of programs that allowed me to learn. But not once have I been taught to manage people. After realizing that I am getting nowhere career wise as an individual contributor, I am currently seeking out opportunities to learn management.
jmtulloss 8y ago
(context: I'm an engineering manager at stripe) Stripe uses the same process for scaling our management corps as we do our ICs. All the steps are tailored to the role the person would be filling at the company. That being said, I think this is a great point. All the considerations others have brought up in this thread can be multiplied for manager roles. It's very important to get this right when you're scaling up a team!
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
sytelus 8y ago
Thing is that you are never going to be able to hire good managers 100% of the times if you are scaling. So entire focus of scalable process should be on how to minimize, defend against and eliminate bad apples as fast as possible. The primary mistake that many companies make is to have manager implicitly trusted without validations and give them almost dictatorial powers. The good process would add checks and balances even at CVP levels, for example, - hiring by committee as opposed to whims of a given manager - introducing bar raisers in hiring loop - promotions requests reviewed by independent committee - demand for metrics driven automated dashboards - enforcing skip level 1:1s - anonymous surveys and complaint box - enforcing culture of proper credit attributions instead of "we did X"
- vikiomega9 8y ago
  And then you've forgotten about the product and will end up with a culture like Google that focuses on technical complexity as opposed to adding value towards the business and focusing on building products.
lukethomas 8y ago
Great point - the reason why no one is talking about this is because they have NO IDEA if the manager is good or not. Many assume the people that they hire are flawless. That's why you see all the posts on hiring. It's easy for people to think they know everything at this point. It's like celebrating after you acquire a customer...what really matters is if they stay (and how long). Currently, there's no feedback loop in place to surface this information. Some companies will do a culture or 360 survey that highlights a few issues here and there, but it's a poor process for determining competence and it's administered by HR (or some function of HR). It needs to be owned by the team leader (and hopefully their boss). I've been working on an app (https://www.fridayfeedback.com https://www.fridayfeedback.com) for the last three years to try to help this. Eng teams love it because it's asynchronous and surfaces new insights to help teams improve.

physcab 8y ago

This is honestly the best barometer of employee happiness. Managers who want to build political empires, don’t have their employees best interests at heart, who communicate poorly, who make questionable moral judgements, or push work down the pipe for the sake of doing work is what makes employees miserable. Companies who empower these types of managers are terrible to work for.

ChrisCinelli 8y ago
I also found out that there are a few bad "managers" that end up raising because they are popular with people and their bosses. They usually have a very high EQ. You can see a few people with little technical acumen, shallow knowledge of the latest trends, very bad on processes and no work ethic that still rise in some organizations. These people spend a lot of time "managing up" on a side and on the other side they are also nice with their employees. They help them move up the ladder and pay higher bonuses demanding less work than other bosses. It is hard to find even good employees give a bad review to somebody that give them extra money and make them work "comfortably".
- ebiester 8y ago
  Here's the part of management that is hard to understand as an IC: 1/3rd of my job is "managing up," that is, getting my boss what they need to get their job done. This can be defining a hiring process, or writing part of a powerpoint deck or getting them the information they need to write it up for their presentation. 1/3rd of my job is "managing across," or working with other managers - the "shit shield" is often from other managers who have their own pain points and are trying to work through issues like whose team has to deal with this ill-defined goal that doesn't really belong in any of the teams but is important. (Or saying that it isn't important after delving into the issue!) Or it's identifying a department-wide problem and working with a small group to have a proposal to solve it. That leaves 1/3rd of the work on actually "managing down." That is mentoring, performance evaluation, conflict management, 1:1s. And if your team is hiring, you spend another block on that. Most of us can't work 60 hour weeks consistently. Are there bad managers? Sure! But some of what makes a good/bad manager is completely hidden. (I'd argue that it's a flaw in our organizational system in general - I'm starting to think we need more people whose job it is to organize the department as a system, and then have the engineering manager as a tech lead++.)
  - afarrell 8y ago
    What about separating the career manager role from the tech lead role. That lets you do things like have the person coaching an IC on how to produce estimates be a different person from the one requesting the estimate.
  - ChrisCinelli 8y ago
    I do not call defining a hiring process managing up. Hiring is part of creating a great team and in my own experience can take more than 1/2 of the manager time especially when you are "building a team from scratch" and you cannot delegate things like screening interviews to other people. Back to the "managing up" I was talking about in my previous comment. I have seen some people spending more than 1/2 of their time on it. The reason I put it in quotes is because sometimes is time spent on getting visibility, becoming "good friends", and even brown-nosing. For any employee it is vital to have a good relationship with their boss in order to maximize her impact and develop influence. But when building camaraderie with her boss becomes the primary activity, it tells you something about the culture that that person is reinforcing and people that is attracting. There is a difference between aiming to "create an alliance to get things done" and "develop a relationship to get recognized and promoted" Even if the two do not have to be mutual exclusive, the motivation for bad managers is predominantly in latter more than former. And what is an order of magnitude better for a company? Someone that looks more for having an impact or a person that looks more to their advancement on the corporate ladder?

amw-zero 8y ago

What does a “good manager” look like?

ticmasta 8y ago
Exactly. If I could find good managers couldn't I just find good employees? This seems like the answer to the first line question of "how do I scale an engineering organization?" but you are not at an addressable solution yet. It's valuable but not sufficient.
- munchbunny 8y ago
  Not sure I understand the point you are making with your question?
ChrisCinelli 8y ago
I would focus on somebody that is able to lead, first. You manage things, you lead people. Management is about handling complexity. Leadership is about creating simplicity. I think the full answer to your question would deserve at least blog post ;-)
inopinatus 8y ago
You grasp that you're not the talent. The job is to facilitate and enable those that are. You are Brian Epstein, not John Lennon. Someone who brings their team achievable goals, and the resources they need, and then gets the hell out of their way. Someone who encourages leadership (in all its many forms) to come from within the team, and doesn't see it as a challenge to their authority. Someone who understands that respect is not magically granted by position. Someone willing to make decisions - sometimes tough ones - on behalf of the team, to communicate both with and on behalf of the team, and defend the team's integrity and autonomy. Someone who understands that communication starts with listening.
- sonnyblarney 8y ago
  Managers are often senior technical leaders and in those cases are 'the talent' in some capacity.

ChrisCinelli 8y ago

Completely in agreement. Hire a bad leader when the company is growing and you risk one year later to have the whole company infested by all sort of people that you would not like to have around (managers included). Some companies completely screw up themselves because of this. Startups usually do not think about this early enough and when the founders realize what is going on is too late and the company culture is screwed. My favorite Steve Job's video on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQKis2Cfpeo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQKis2Cfpeo

cakes 8y ago
Especially if you witness it as an employee and run it up the chain as far as possible and it gets ignored. Having had good and bad in my career has saved me from realizing that this was happening and that I shouldn't sit idle but if I'm not idle and do something it becomes extremely disheartening to watch this happen (and then I leave when it becomes apparent that nothing will be done and I'm miserable under my manager)
- ChrisCinelli 8y ago
  In a company with these kind of problems, if you try to run it up the chain, it usually gets "captured" very early on from allied powers of the bad guy. In a healthy company with the right "antibodies" in places, a bad apple has more chances of being caught before it spoils the whole bunch.

kylemh 8y ago

The difference between the few companies I've been at has been made to seem like a laying down in a valley versus standing atop a mountain now that I have a good manager.

arvinsim 8y ago

I agree with this. I have already worked as an individual contributor for 10 years. I have improved a lot technically because there are a lot of programs that allowed me to learn. But not once have I been taught to manage people. After realizing that I am getting nowhere career wise as an individual contributor, I am currently seeking out opportunities to learn management.

jmtulloss 8y ago

(context: I'm an engineering manager at stripe) Stripe uses the same process for scaling our management corps as we do our ICs. All the steps are tailored to the role the person would be filling at the company. That being said, I think this is a great point. All the considerations others have brought up in this thread can be multiplied for manager roles. It's very important to get this right when you're scaling up a team!

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

sytelus 8y ago

Thing is that you are never going to be able to hire good managers 100% of the times if you are scaling. So entire focus of scalable process should be on how to minimize, defend against and eliminate bad apples as fast as possible. The primary mistake that many companies make is to have manager implicitly trusted without validations and give them almost dictatorial powers. The good process would add checks and balances even at CVP levels, for example, - hiring by committee as opposed to whims of a given manager - introducing bar raisers in hiring loop - promotions requests reviewed by independent committee - demand for metrics driven automated dashboards - enforcing skip level 1:1s - anonymous surveys and complaint box - enforcing culture of proper credit attributions instead of "we did X"

vikiomega9 8y ago
And then you've forgotten about the product and will end up with a culture like Google that focuses on technical complexity as opposed to adding value towards the business and focusing on building products.

lukethomas 8y ago

Great point - the reason why no one is talking about this is because they have NO IDEA if the manager is good or not. Many assume the people that they hire are flawless. That's why you see all the posts on hiring. It's easy for people to think they know everything at this point. It's like celebrating after you acquire a customer...what really matters is if they stay (and how long). Currently, there's no feedback loop in place to surface this information. Some companies will do a culture or 360 survey that highlights a few issues here and there, but it's a poor process for determining competence and it's administered by HR (or some function of HR). It needs to be owned by the team leader (and hopefully their boss). I've been working on an app (https://www.fridayfeedback.com https://www.fridayfeedback.com) for the last three years to try to help this. Eng teams love it because it's asynchronous and surfaces new insights to help teams improve.