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I've worked as an EM at four different companies, from large enterprises to small startups, and I think "the role of engineering manager" is a myth. Your role v
by jampa 11mo ago
I've worked as an EM at four different companies, from large enterprises to small startups, and I think "the role of engineering manager" is a myth. Your role varies wildly from one company to another. In every company I've worked at, my job has never been the same:
In the end, engineering management basically requires you to counter-balance whichever of the four pillars your team needs most: Product, Process, People, and Programming.
- Too few people? You'll work on scope to make the deliverables meet reality. Since there's not much communication overhead, you'll be able to program.
- No PM? You now own the product pillar entirely. This takes a lot of your time: You'll need to validate features, prioritize the roadmap, and even talk directly with clients. None of the rest matters if your team is shipping features with no user value.
- Too many people in the team/company? Say goodbye to programming. You'll be responsible for careers, making everyone work cohesively, and navigating the org to get the right resources and support for your team.
- Reporting close to the CEO? You'll handle the bridge between sales, operations, client communications, and other functions.
The common thread is that your focus constantly shifts based on where your team's bottlenecks are. The key is identifying which pillar needs attention and adapting accordingly.
- tyleo 11mo agoI feel like a lot of leadership positions are like this. I was a Principal Tech Lead at a 300 personal company and I did everything from PMing large tech teams, to collecting info from top users in spreadsheets, to building demos directly for the CEO, to building a key part of our tech used by over 100 other engineers. I always told people I’d plunge the toilets myself if they were preventing the staff from working. I feel like the closer you get to top leadership the more your job becomes identifying and executing on whatever is highest value that you have the skills for.
- saghm 11mo ago> I always told people I’d plunge the toilets myself if they were preventing the staff from working. This is a lot closer to a literal interpretation of "shit rolls downhill, so a good manager will be a shit umbrella to protect their team" than I thought I'd ever see.
- zmmmmm 11mo ago> identifying and executing on whatever is highest value that you have the skills for There's a hidden assumption there though, that you CAN actually do that. At least management skills mostly stick over time but even a year away from hands on technical work is going to leave you likely stranded and unable to execute on the technical aspects. Which is why I continue to push back against suggestions technical managers shouldn't be engaged hands on. Apart from being incredibly hostile to their own interests (it will be central to you getting hired to any future role), it also impairs one of the most strategic aspects of the role which can drastically affect the value you can deliver internally in the future as well.
- jjav 11mo ago> but even a year away from hands on technical work is going to leave you likely stranded and unable to execute on the technical aspects This is an interesting myth, but certainly a myth. I guess if we consider technical skill to be intimate knowledge of the latest fad framework, that might be one source of the myth. But that's not technical skills, just trivia about an implementation detail. The fundamentals like networking, process and memory management, databases and SQL, all change slowly and are very long-lived career-spanning knowledge.
- tyleo 11mo agoAgreed, I haven’t seen this in my career at least. I’ve worked with contractors on a yearly basis who would take some time off and then hit the ground running. If there’s any data supporting the opposite, I’d love to see it.
- rester324 11mo agoKubernetes is not a fad. DynamoDB and MongoDB is not a fad. Golang is not a fad. These were all born in the last few decades, so they are rather new, and they will stay for equally long decades. And the list goes on and on... So all of those skills in your list mean nothing when it comes to these fundamental technical tools. They require an understanding on a completely different abstraction level which is equally complex as of those that you listed. So if you don't have the understanding of these technologies when the project requires it, you are obsolete and you have no right to be in a leading position. And such fundamental technologies are born continuously. So this myth that you can have fundamentals and that's enough is definitely untrue.
- camel_gopher 11mo agoYou have to be careful of the perceived politics around this. Tall poppies get cut down. I still don’t totally understand why but sometimes taking initiative doesn’t sit well with the folks who want their trains to run on time.
- tyleo 11mo agoI think this varies from person-to-person or maybe organization-to-organization. I've definitely seen variations in the health of organizations but I think you can break up the categories used to judge them, e.g., meritocracy, overtime frequency, planning accuracy, psychological safety, value of work, etc. I'd say the place I worked felt above average in meritocracy. In other words, it felt like folks sticking out to take initiative were more often rewarded than punished. I don't think we were perfect in every category though.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- orionfollett 11mo agoAt least in small companies, my experience is that being adaptive like this applies to ICs as well as managers. Although to be fair the environment I'm thinking of doesn't have any full time managers.
- tyleo 11mo agoYeah, I think true. The smaller a company is the easier and more important it is to think and act holistically.
- phillmv 11mo agoi found this comment to be more insightful than the article