Engineering Management Philosophies and Why They Matter Even if You are Not a Manager

Annie is a software engineering manager leading a platform team within Square’s platform & infrastructure engineering organization. Prior to Square, she worked at a number of startups across a spectrum of industries from consumer products to enterprise solutions, as well as a wide variety of teams from sales to engineering. Having worked with many different managers, she’s formed her own leadership philosophies.

“What are your management philosophies?”

This question gets asked frequently in management discussions and it receives a different answer from every person who responds. As an engineering manager, I have a hard time answering this question mostly because it’s unclear what the question is actually about. Sometimes it can be interpreted as “What are your priorities as a manager?” or “What are your views on a certain situation or topic? — but feel free to describe whichever one comes to mind”

The role of an engineering manager (EM) varies greatly across companies. Some managers don’t have a technical background, some managers are super tech leads, some managers feel the need to stay extremely technical, while others feel less of a need. Generally speaking, management philosophies are a set of guiding principles that…