Engineering Management for the Rest of Us  🔗 **Source:** [Engineering Management for the Rest of Us]() ## Highlights - Leadership is challenging: where your work used to be about you and what value you brought to a team, your work is now about enabling everyone around you. - Engineering management requires that you understand power imbalances, people structures, and consider strategies that are outside one particular project. - People are not pure functions; they have all sorts of interesting side effects. - Values are the fundamental beliefs that guide us, motivate us, and drive our actions. Values describe the qualities we want most to embody. They help us determine what is important, help us understand what we essentially align with. - Values don’t offer something to fix, or an action to take; they provide us context so that we can be more understanding of what is happening and why. - The act of sharing values can also have a side effect of building trust and vulnerability on a team. - Values provide context to a person’s mental state, needs, and motivations. - “All criticism, attack, insults, and judgments vanish when we focus attention on hearing the feelings and needs behind a message.” - Tags: favorite - core values help companies to determine their goals by creating a stable direction forward. - You express what you value in practice by what you let into your life, what actions you actually take, and how you spend your time. - the teams with the most generative cultures (mission-driven, trusting) were also those with the least outages and highest performance. - Your team needs to see one another with a regular cadence. They need to talk through their work, discuss issues, and hang out a bit. - Tags: favorite - you’re the responsible and accountable party for setting the team up appropriately for the success of the project, - Saying “we” holds you accountable to your team for leadership decisions that you are a part of, which is how it should be. - Since you’re taking ownership of the decision, you’re also owning that you know about other pieces of the puzzle, and are showing a willingness to dive in with your team. - The culture and morale on your team is a large part of your responsibility. - flow state, moments where you’re so involved in what you’re doing, you feel like every tool you need is at your fingertips, and what you’re making is bigger than you. - A few conditions need to be met for your engineers to get into flow state in their work: You are aligned on the base premises of the work. Your work is challenging, but not impossible. You feel a sense of togetherness with your team and peers, that you’re all building something together and have each other’s backs. Your moral values are not at odds with the work at hand. You feel respected. You get fair and timely feedback on your tasks. This does not necessarily have to be human feedback. It can also come in the form of compilation success, tests passing, or PRs (pull requests) going through. Upon completing tasks and working hard for the company, you get fair pay, bonuses, promotions, and raises. You feel a loss of sense of self when performing your work. You are doing something for the sake of the task, not for politics or to be right. Rather you are doing the best work possible for the best possible outcomes. As such, you care more about continuous improvements than your own ego. You feel like people believe in you and what you’re working on. - the more connected you feel to other people in times of stress, the happier you are, and the less stress you report. - In peer and mob programming, team members share their thinking through a problem, as well as wins and mistakes. - Check in with facts. Sometimes we react to an event without checking that we understand exactly what’s going on. - Find and rally around the positive. Since your brain is actively pulling you and others into fear mode, looking for the positive elements of a situation and saying them out loud can help balance what’s naturally imbalanced. - Tags: favorite - Reject negative premises. As a manager, you will sometimes have to counter paranoid or negative views on a situation. - Review consequences. Most of the time, the consequences of an action are not as dire as people make them out to be. - In dire situations, step away. If you have extremely volatile people on your team who are stuck in a bad loop, you may have to reconvene at a later time, and meet with them 1:1 to get on the same page. - “You can’t call yourself a leader by coming into a situation that is by nature uncertain, ambiguous—and create confusion. You have to create clarity where none exists.” —Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft - When a person feels that their work is valued, that they have a North Star purpose both for their personal growth and for wider impact with the people and industry, it’s an incredibly powerful thing. - Building a team where a group of people from diverse backgrounds, cultures, and lived experiences can thrive is how we create healthy working environments. - The first part of building healthy teams is admitting you won’t know everything, and this may be a time where you need to listen more than you talk. - Stages of Inclusive Leadership Continuum as: Unaware Aware Active Advocate - The culture of your team is only as strong as the worst behavior it tolerates. It’s your job to speak up. - Career ladders alone will not create clarity—as managers, we need to put them into action. - career-ladders.dev - I love it when the qualities you’re working on developing with an employee are those that will serve them anywhere, not just within the company. These should be traits that expand their skill set. These types of tasks typically take some long term work, but it can be very rewarding to work together on because there’s a larger purpose. - In this step, we go through the career laddering doc. I typically have an employee read aloud every list item in their current role to me, then self-assess the progress they’ve made on each item. - The next step is called a 30/60/90. The concept is that your employee breaks down the work they want to be doing in thirty, sixty, and ninety days. I tend to do this with a bit of a twist: We start with ninety days. I ask, “What would you like to accomplish here within the next three months?” Since the career laddering is fresh in their minds, there’s already some guidance on what their focus should include. - I try to set a reminder in our 1:1 doc to revisit the 30/90 plan in about a month. When we check in, we see how each task is coming along, putting little checkmarks next to what’s done. - Try to realign by considering the following: What are their personal goals? What are the company needs? Are we able to address the above two with the work being done? Ask what they think we could do together to make further progress. Restate the expected outcomes and clarify that they can reach those outcomes however they think is best, allowing them to iterate on their tactical plans if necessary. - “People leave managers, not jobs.” - But in the balance of power, the manager can always speak directly to the employee. The inverse isn’t always true. - Even though 1:1s have a tendency to be informal, because everyone already knows each other, they are way more successful when there’s an agenda. - An agenda gives you the context you need to prevent wandering into topics you might not be at liberty to discuss. - Your job is now to align people to the outcomes instead of tactical details of how to get something done. The how is up to them. - Tags: favorite - convey the same message, but in different ways. - A good leader cannot sit and watch things carry on as usual without sorting out how transformation can occur. - In order to make transformation, the culture has to shift to allow for it. - Be specific about why the changes are made. - Support people to grow the skills they need in order to succeed. - A trap we can easily fall into is talking about the end state and the solutions without talking about the problems we’re trying to solve. - Perception of unfair decision-making. This typically happens when you haven’t done the “seek to understand” step above, or when you don’t talk through the risks when communicating the new vision. - Respect the back channel. If it’s on fire, something wasn’t communicated well. - This is feedback. Feedback can exist as an important discussion between two people, as comments on a document, and as almost imperceptible emotions shown on a person’s face as you convey information. - In terms of feedback, there is a bit of natural tension within our own egos. We want to learn and grow, but we also want to feel accepted. We need feedback so that we can hone our focus and challenge ourselves to get better. But in order to truly hear this feedback, we have to work around internal systems at play that are designed to protect ourselves, which can be tricky. - A typical process for giving feedback could look like this: Do the pre-work of hearing how your team member likes to get feedback. Make sure the feedback is necessary. Check in with your own motivations and biases. Give them specific feedback as soon as you can, framing it in a way that they may best be able to hear it. Keep the conversation open, and allow them to ask questions. Talk through expectations and what could be better in the future. If your feedback is related to an HR violation, be very clear about next steps and follow-up. - Go back to the mental state: Is this person in a good mental state to hear this, and are you in a good mental state to handle the conversation on your end? If not, and you still need to deliver the feedback, how can you adjust the tone and setting to be accommodating? - Is the feedback immediate? All of the pre-work aside, you should ideally give feedback as close to the event that warrants it as possible. It can be disheartening and even embarrassing to find out in a performance review six months after an event occurred that you should have been doing something differently. - Are you remembering to give them feedback in their preferred method? If they asked for gentle feedback, remember to touch on positive things they’ve been doing as well. - Keep the conversation open. Allow them to ask questions while they process the information. They may need to understand some nuances to fully engage with the information. This dialogue can also help calm down the flight-or-fight part of our brain. - Be specific, and speak to your own experience. “You are X” is an ad hominem attack on the other person’s character. Consider instead, “I felt X this happened.” They can’t argue with the way something made you feel, and by providing a specific example, you are talking through a specific action rather than condemning their character. - Feedback is more helpful if you can really nail down what exactly could have been improved and why. Align them with a vision for why this feedback is important. Not to be harsh, but if you don’t know the answer to this, the feedback is probably unnecessary. - You can even connect the feedback to their values and goals. For instance, if they value decisiveness and innovation, but they took so long to complete a project that the audience lost interest, the feedback you are giving them can be in service of their own values over time. - it’s much easier to hijack a person’s amygdala and put them into a fight or flight state if they feel judged. - Feeling safe in a team environment is important because psychological safety in general tends to help people feel happier and more productive. - Receiving feedback can be difficult, but it’s also the best way to grow, and the best way to demonstrate the kind of vulnerability you will need to cultivate to have honest communication on your team. - Send out an anonymous feedback form. This can allow people to be honest without fear of retribution, because there’s always going to be power imbalance. - Ask for feedback in a group about a particular project or event. This is useful because it keeps the feedback specific and focused, with less chance of an awkward ad hominem attack situation. If you do this, be okay with an uncomfortable silence so that people can process and think (I have a hard time with this one). - Ask for feedback in a 1:1. You can do this a few different ways, but it is a good idea to let people know ahead of time that you will be asking for feedback so that you don’t throw them off guard. Power dynamics can make it tough for people to assess what they’re comfortable sharing on the spot. - Tags: favorite - Ego resilience affords you the ability to separate yourself from others a bit and to take responsibility. - But a healthy ego can also help you separate what’s yours from what belongs to other people. - A person having a fault or needing feedback of their own does not negate your need for feedback as well. - a good meeting is: The purpose of the meeting is clear. There’s an agenda (we dive into the complexity of this in a moment). The right people (and the right number of people) are in the room. Not too many people where communication is overly complicated, and not too few people where those you need to move forward aren’t there. There’s some order. People aren’t dropping in and out, talking over each other, or being generally inconsiderate. There’s a clear decision, outcome, and next steps at the end. - Part of the purpose of the meeting is the discussion itself. - it’s good to hear people out and then rein things back in by discussing what you think you’re hearing and tying it back to a shared purpose. - A good meeting must have a DRI (directly responsible individual), and it is not necessarily the person who called the meeting. It might not be you. But you must designate who owns the project and ultimately makes decisions when there’s one to be made. - DACI (driver, improver, contributor, and informed), - RACI (responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed) - RAPID (recommend, agree, perform, input, decide). - As you move up the leadership chain, the further you will be from the actual metal of the problems, and thus, the more you will need to rely on your staff and others to tell you the truth of the problem space. - Create a makefile, CONTRIBUTING.md, and/or do a writeup in the README of how the project is constructed, what kinds of styles are used, and the types of PRs that you’re looking for (or not looking for, as the case may be). Here’s a small example from my Array Explorer project: https://github.com/sdras/array-explorer/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md - Make good use of issue templates. In some cases, like if you have a very popular project, it might make sense to create your own form and do some validation - When you ask someone for help or label an issue “help wanted” and someone PRs, write a comment explaining why you are closing it if you decide not to merge. - Provide a code of conduct that makes clear what type of behavior is acceptable and what is not. - Tags: favorite - If someone is confused, try to assume good intentions. - Don’t close a PR from an active contributor and reimplement the same thing yourself. Just . . . don’t do this. - If a fight breaks out on an issue that gets personal, shut it down to core maintainers as soon as possible. Lock the issue and ensure to enforce the code of conduct if necessary. - Objectives should be high-level goals that inspire a picture of the future and imagination. - Key Results are specific measurable pieces of data over time. - At a top level, I like to define future OKRs by doing two things: looking forward and looking backward. In looking forward, take myself out of the day-to-day and consider the big picture: What do I think our company could do that will make waves in the next few years? What could I do to contribute to this? While you form some of these concepts, take a look backward: What does the data say about this direction? What pace is the growth of this idea currently? What data do I have access to? What are the unknowns? What are the gaps I could close? - As hard as it is to say no to things, you have to in order to give your team bandwidth and space for what is critical. - If you’re going to leave unfinished work, it’s helpful to keep track of what’s left. This is not just for you, but for any stakeholders like your teammates or product managers and project managers. - A team that’s motivated, has psychological safety with you and among themselves, has good developer experience within their tech stack, and feels aligned with the company’s goals will always perform better than one that isn’t. - Tags: favorite - You may find that it makes less sense from a focus perspective to have every engineer split time across product and engineering projects. - Technical debt is one of the most common ways to unlock your team. For every feature you write, if engineering effort is slowed, you’re not only losing time in terms of product development, you’re also losing money in terms of engineering time in salary. - Being overwhelmed with options, decisions, and meetings doesn’t happen all at once either. Typically this type of bombardment is cumulative. This means it’s pertinent to work prioritization into your everyday life. - Tags: favorite - I try to schedule similar tasks around the same time. The higher you go in the management chain, the more disparate projects you will be working on. - we should give ourselves a little grace. No one can do everything, and there’s really no such thing as perfect balance. - Forgive yourself when life doesn’t have perfect structure, and just do your best with whatever tools you have. - “It’s amazing what you can get done if you just sit down and do it.” —Chris Coyier, creator of CSS-Tricks and cofounder of CodePen - put things in the following order: Things that are actively on fire or are time-sensitive Things that can be done quickly Things that need a scheduled block of time Things that I may get to further along - “If you want better results, then forget about setting goals. Focus on your system instead.” —James Clear, Atomic Habits - If we don’t set these boundaries, we don’t live our values, and ultimately can’t properly support our teams. Saying no feels strange and uncomfortable at first, but is an act of courage on behalf of your team, in an indirect way. This is a hard job. Take care of yourself, it’s the best way to take care of your team. - Make decisions that are right for you; trust yourself to know what you need. - Belief in your own competence and abilities is related to self-confidence, but is not the same. He calls this self-efficacy. Self-efficacy perceptions are “a key factor in a generative system of human competence.” - When we feel we have some agency in our lives, when we believe in our own competence to act on what’s within our locus of control, we thrive. - Self-efficacy not only helps us be successful in endeavors, it also helps us become resilient to obstacles and failures. - Mentorship and sponsorship are different: mentorship is giving someone advice or consultation, while sponsorship is offering someone an opportunity or connecting them with people who may offer an opportunity. - Caring is vital to doing this job well. - If you pay attention, you can see how a person’s values dictate their behavior and ethics. - Tags: blue - A lot of leadership is selfless, so we may sometimes be tempted to think our own needs take a backseat here. They do to an extent, but you can’t care for others if you don’t put the oxygen mask on yourself first, so to speak. - Tags: blue - Communicating our own values also gives our employees a bit of context about our working style and needs, which they’ll need in order to best understand us. - Tags: blue - Working on a team with values that largely align with your own is nice, because you can really dig into the makeup of the culture on your team. Clarity is what we’re aiming for here. Clarity is key. - Tags: blue - misalignment with too many fundamental values can lead to burnout. - Tags: blue - Not only should you pay attention to inconsistencies between your values and your work, you should also strive to make sure you’re not violating the values of your team in the day-to-day as well. - Tags: blue - When people talk about “good” managers, they are likely referring to people who show care and appreciation for people’s values, and also respect their boundaries. - Tags: blue - If I was going to nail down what I think my job is, it’s to enable the people around me to do their best work . . . together. - working environment where we can be ourselves, make jokes, and be within a trusted group can help us feel included. It’s hard to stay at a job without that trust; and likewise, you can retain employees by providing it. - Tags: blue - It’s hard to model vulnerability, because we think it makes us weak. In truth, it takes a ton of courage and can embolden courage in others too. - failure. I myself struggle with admitting vulnerability—will it make me be seen as weak, given I’m a woman in tech? Some behaviors, when displayed by my male peers, can look like humility. The same behaviors, when displayed by me, could be read as incompetence. - It can be scary to go deep with someone soon after meeting them, - A larger action item: try to change any processes or patch up misalignments that exist around the person that might alleviate the disconnects. Are they overworked on projects that aren’t meaningful to them? If so, perhaps reallocate their time. - at some qualities that a trusting team has: They feel comfortable raising issues directly with each other. They share personal details with each other, and admit when they are having a bad day—to other team members, this is no big deal. They can debate with one another to find good outcomes. They are flexible with one another’s needs. - if team members lack trust: They raise issues with you about one another rather than with each other. They are closed off and don’t know much about each other. They don’t feel comfortable admitting when they’re having a rough time, so no one has context when things go poorly. When an issue is raised, they quickly close it, and whoever talks first “wins.” They think mainly of their own needs without checking in with the group. - developed with one another. People tend to like folks they have more similarities with. The more we spend time with people, the more similarities we may find, even if not immediately obvious or surface level. - or written documents. I am saying that it’s a good practice to balance open conversations with a place where team members can relax a bit. I recommend making a private - Owning your mistakes as the leader accountable can take vulnerability. - Tags: blue - When your team succeeds in something, though, praise them and leave yourself out of it. By leaving yourself out, you give the team the credit they deserve. - Tags: blue - Because as a manager, our job is to try as much as we can to drive balance and clarity. - Tags: blue - “The leadership team decided that we need to ship at least three features this quarter, so I guess that’s what we have to figure out how to do.” versus: “One of the key OKRs (objectives and key results) this quarter is that we as a company need to double the signups to our platform. We’ve done some calculations that show we can almost certainly get there by shipping three features, so let’s all talk about what we can do within our group to make that possible. If you’re curious, we can chat through what initiatives other groups are doing to support this as well.” - Tags: blue - Think of a mistake not as a stick to beat yourself (or others) up with, but as a lesson learned to be as mindful as possible in the future, to promote a better working environment. - Tags: blue - create an environment where people can feel like they’re getting their best work done. - Tags: blue - flow state is the phenomenon in which a person is fully immersed in an activity that leads to focus, energized involvement, and enjoyment. - Tags: blue - Working to create an inclusive environment is quite literally connected to doing great work. This also means encouraging bonds between workers, even when you’re not around. - Tags: blue - the undoing effect, - Tags: blue - You need to actively create a good culture and team morale; it’s part of your job! - Tags: blue - break down one of her larger tasks into smaller bits. - Tags: blue - New tasks take cognitive effort. - Tags: blue - Habits, on the other hand, take very little effort for our mind. - Tags: blue - “Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. - Tags: blue