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A somewhat unrelated question- what is an Engineering Manager? is it a glorious title for a team leader?

by 2rsf 6y ago

indigodaddy 6y ago
So you have an Engineering team or group, and there is this manager(s) who oversees the engineering things that they do..
- 2rsf 6y ago
  > team or group There's a big difference there, managing a few people is what I know as a Team Lead while managing a group means managing a few teams with their team leads.
  - indigodaddy 6y ago
    I said team or group to highlight there could be multiple engineering managers, typically, yes, with a team of 8-12 (perhaps 15 in some orgs/companies) members..
  - bencoder 6y ago
    Yes, everywhere I've worked (UK), the EM manages a group of teams, each with their own team lead.
nicoburns 6y ago
Job titles are all a bit fuzzy in general, but generally I would expect a "team leader" to be someone who manages a small team and is also part of that team as an individual contributor and may way be lead technically too. An engineering manager is not an engineer at all (although they may have been in the past): they only do management (of a team of engineers). The idea being that they remove that burden from the rest of the team. A team with an engineering manager would usually have a separate tech lead who lead on technical decisions.
- pbhjpbhj 6y ago
  >An engineering manager is not an engineer at all // I thought the "ing" made the role specifically one for engineers. The idea being that engineers could continue to work doing engineering whilst moving into management. An engineering manager would be a senior engineer who also manages people: particularly those people's engineering activity. But, I don't have much experience of this, so I might be wrong.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    Generally not the case (and where it is, it’s probably a title or an employee being abused). Engineering is being used here as a categorical rather than descriptive adjective. This person is a manager; the category of people they’re managing is engineering. If they were happy and you described them as a smiling engineering manager, smiling is descriptive (and used as you were surmising) and engineering is categorical.
  - foota 6y ago
    In my experience this role is referred to as a TLM, a tech lead/manager.
vishnugupta 6y ago
The responsibilities vary significantly across companies of different sizes. What follows is typical responsibilities of EMs in Amazon/Uber/Google type of orgs. 1. Project manage your team's deliverables. 2. Interface with other teams/EMs to unblock your team's progress. 3. Interface with product manager/owner to plan for the upcoming quarter/half. 4. Represent/sell/market your team in appropriate forums so that you keep getting high impacting projects/work. 5. Keep an eye on inter-person dynamics within the team. Address them early. 6. Hiring. For your and other teams. 7. Plan for your team member's career growth within the org. Promoting someone takes active participation of the manager with a plan in place. 8. Keep abreast of the tech-architecture that team owns. You don't want to accumulate too much of tech debt. Typically, a "team leader" works mostly within the team; infrequently interfacing with other tams; I'd say it's 80-20 split between within team outside team focus. EM on there other hand spend about 60-70% of their time interfacing and interacting with people outside of their team. Of course, exceptions exist but this is how it's been in my experience.
- fatnoah 6y ago
  As an Engineering Manager vs. team lead or Principal Engineer, the main difference is your #7 (growth and performance). That's the thing I list as #1 in terms of what an Engineering Manager does. You'll play a big role in all of the others as you progress in seniority, but if you don't love the growth and planning, it's hard to success as a Manager. Related, you're also the one that has to make the hard decision when it's time to part ways with someone who's not working out.
k__ 6y ago
Team lead(er) always seems to me like the attempt to make a manager look unimportant.
AdrianB1 6y ago
There is no definition for it, in every company that uses this name it has their own meaning.
YesThatTom2 6y ago
My plainspoken definition: An engineering manager manages engineers. They understand the technical work about as well as the people they manage, so that they can give relevant coaching. They also understand management principles that make engineering projects successful (WIP counts, release process pros and cons, etc). In other words they know how to structure work flows.
rickspencer3 6y ago
I answer this question a lot. For me, a summary version of my model is as follows: EM is a technical role in the sense it includes managing technical projects. However, it is not an engineering role. I hold Engineering Managers accountable for the following three things: 1. People Management. You are the line manager. You must deal with hiring and firing. You should know the intrinsic motivations of everyone on your team and be able to feed those motivations. There are rote parts of the job as well, such as signing expense reports, vacation requests, and performance reviews. 2. Project Management. You are responsible for your team's delivery. If the team is blocked by something external, you need to resolve that. 3. Program Management. You should "own" your area. You should understand why the company is investing in your area and you have an opinion and a view for how your area can best accomplish the company's goals. You should understand your users/customers as well as or better than anyone. Even if you can code, as an Engineering Manager you should not take work items for your team. If you need to switch your focus to interviewing a candidate, or a valuable team member is getting poached, or you need to talk to a customer, etc... your team needs you to take care of these things. If you have to make a choice between doing your EM job and keeping your team unblocked by delivering code, you messed up. That's a very brief overview of how I treat the role. I know many folks disagree, so YMMV.

A somewhat unrelated question- what is an Engineering Manager? is it a glorious title for a team leader?

by 2rsf 6y ago

A somewhat unrelated question- what is an Engineering Manager? is it a glorious title for a team leader?

So you have an Engineering team or group, and there is this manager(s) who oversees the engineering things that they do..

2rsf 6y ago
> team or group There's a big difference there, managing a few people is what I know as a Team Lead while managing a group means managing a few teams with their team leads.
- indigodaddy 6y ago
  I said team or group to highlight there could be multiple engineering managers, typically, yes, with a team of 8-12 (perhaps 15 in some orgs/companies) members..
- bencoder 6y ago
  Yes, everywhere I've worked (UK), the EM manages a group of teams, each with their own team lead.

nicoburns 6y ago

Job titles are all a bit fuzzy in general, but generally I would expect a "team leader" to be someone who manages a small team and is also part of that team as an individual contributor and may way be lead technically too. An engineering manager is not an engineer at all (although they may have been in the past): they only do management (of a team of engineers). The idea being that they remove that burden from the rest of the team. A team with an engineering manager would usually have a separate tech lead who lead on technical decisions.

pbhjpbhj 6y ago
>An engineering manager is not an engineer at all // I thought the "ing" made the role specifically one for engineers. The idea being that engineers could continue to work doing engineering whilst moving into management. An engineering manager would be a senior engineer who also manages people: particularly those people's engineering activity. But, I don't have much experience of this, so I might be wrong.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  Generally not the case (and where it is, it’s probably a title or an employee being abused). Engineering is being used here as a categorical rather than descriptive adjective. This person is a manager; the category of people they’re managing is engineering. If they were happy and you described them as a smiling engineering manager, smiling is descriptive (and used as you were surmising) and engineering is categorical.
- foota 6y ago
  In my experience this role is referred to as a TLM, a tech lead/manager.

vishnugupta 6y ago

The responsibilities vary significantly across companies of different sizes. What follows is typical responsibilities of EMs in Amazon/Uber/Google type of orgs. 1. Project manage your team's deliverables. 2. Interface with other teams/EMs to unblock your team's progress. 3. Interface with product manager/owner to plan for the upcoming quarter/half. 4. Represent/sell/market your team in appropriate forums so that you keep getting high impacting projects/work. 5. Keep an eye on inter-person dynamics within the team. Address them early. 6. Hiring. For your and other teams. 7. Plan for your team member's career growth within the org. Promoting someone takes active participation of the manager with a plan in place. 8. Keep abreast of the tech-architecture that team owns. You don't want to accumulate too much of tech debt. Typically, a "team leader" works mostly within the team; infrequently interfacing with other tams; I'd say it's 80-20 split between within team outside team focus. EM on there other hand spend about 60-70% of their time interfacing and interacting with people outside of their team. Of course, exceptions exist but this is how it's been in my experience.

fatnoah 6y ago
As an Engineering Manager vs. team lead or Principal Engineer, the main difference is your #7 (growth and performance). That's the thing I list as #1 in terms of what an Engineering Manager does. You'll play a big role in all of the others as you progress in seniority, but if you don't love the growth and planning, it's hard to success as a Manager. Related, you're also the one that has to make the hard decision when it's time to part ways with someone who's not working out.

k__ 6y ago

Team lead(er) always seems to me like the attempt to make a manager look unimportant.

AdrianB1 6y ago

There is no definition for it, in every company that uses this name it has their own meaning.

YesThatTom2 6y ago

My plainspoken definition: An engineering manager manages engineers. They understand the technical work about as well as the people they manage, so that they can give relevant coaching. They also understand management principles that make engineering projects successful (WIP counts, release process pros and cons, etc). In other words they know how to structure work flows.

rickspencer3 6y ago

I answer this question a lot. For me, a summary version of my model is as follows: EM is a technical role in the sense it includes managing technical projects. However, it is not an engineering role. I hold Engineering Managers accountable for the following three things: 1. People Management. You are the line manager. You must deal with hiring and firing. You should know the intrinsic motivations of everyone on your team and be able to feed those motivations. There are rote parts of the job as well, such as signing expense reports, vacation requests, and performance reviews. 2. Project Management. You are responsible for your team's delivery. If the team is blocked by something external, you need to resolve that. 3. Program Management. You should "own" your area. You should understand why the company is investing in your area and you have an opinion and a view for how your area can best accomplish the company's goals. You should understand your users/customers as well as or better than anyone. Even if you can code, as an Engineering Manager you should not take work items for your team. If you need to switch your focus to interviewing a candidate, or a valuable team member is getting poached, or you need to talk to a customer, etc... your team needs you to take care of these things. If you have to make a choice between doing your EM job and keeping your team unblocked by delivering code, you messed up. That's a very brief overview of how I treat the role. I know many folks disagree, so YMMV.