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I think this works as long as the engineering managers follow a few guidelines: * Don't code 20% of a full solution with your 30% time and expect the other eng
by hkarthik 13y ago
I think this works as long as the engineering managers follow a few guidelines:
* Don't code 20% of a full solution with your 30% time and expect the other engineers to pick up your work and finish the other 80% to make it production ready. If you can't cross the halfway point with a task, don't take it on.
* If you do need an engineer to make your code production ready or fix a bug in it, don't act like you did him/her a favor by "getting it off the ground". They are doing YOU a favor by finishing your work for you!
* Be humble and expect to take massive amounts of criticism from engineers who take a lot of pride in their code and spend their careers perfecting it.
* Avoid becoming overly defensive and asking engineers to relax their established code quality guidelines or test coverage to accommodate your compressed schedule.
- ojbyrne 13y agoTo echo your first point, I think the best task for an engineering manager is fixing bugs. It lets them keep in touch with the code base, is generally small enough that it can be compatible with constant interruptions, and demonstrates a much needed humility.
- patrickmay 13y agoGood guidelines. I'd add: * Spend some time on bug fixes and paying down technical debt. You'll get a better understanding of the challenges your team deals with day-to-day.
- toadi 13y agoWhen I ran my own company as technical co-founder. I wrote POC's to demonstrate something was possible or what I wanted to habe built. I had no issue in throwing away all this code. I didn't write production code. I fixed bugs or refactored...