Ramping up As An Engineering Manager — Introduction

Hello everyone, this is my first article and I am going to share about my experience in engineering management.

I have been working as a software engineering manager for 2 years. I got promoted to engineering manager position at the end of 2021. Until that time I had never had any experience of management. I started my career as a mobile application developer so first my aim has been to transform my daily routines and mindset. Transforming from software development to management took some time and that was tough. For instance, developing software performance is measured easily however managing the team doesn’t have tangible outputs directly. Managing the team has different milestones from developing software. In order to learn these milestones and change my mindset and adapt my position, I read and searched much. I have gained valuable experience and I have learned a lot of important things. While I read and learn, I could not find much resource that shared experience about this position. Also I observed some wrong processes. So I have decided to share my own journey to help everyone, while I am learning this process. Therefore here I am. :)

Engineering Levels

Firstly lets check out the engineering levels.

In software development everyone’s career starts as an individual contributor. Everyone thinks about his/her own career path and asks himself/herself what his/her goal is. At the same time these questions are related to promotion process. So these ladders help us to clean our way. While we are working as an individual contributor at some point you need to make a choice which road to follow, technical or managerial.

If you choose technical track, you become a staff engineer, senior staff engineer and principal engineer orderly. On the other hand, if you switch to management position and you choose managerial track, you become an engineering manager first.

What is an engineering manager position and what does an engineering manager do?

Being an engineering manager is the first step in the management position. Besides, this position is based on technical knowledge although it is a management position. Engineering managers should build a high performing team and support team to accomplish their goals. They should help the team to deliver product and ensure that the team could improve their skills while developing the products. Likewise, they should establish collaboration with stakeholders, other teams and peer engineering managers. Prioritizing work, delivering incremental products, and guiding the team and stakeholders on best practices while developing the product are essential duties of being an engineering manager. As a result engineering manager’s duties are based on three topics: People Management, Project Management and Technical Knowledge. (Each company has different expectations from this position; nevertheless, these three topics complement and summarize this position.)

1. People Management

This caption consists many essential things. First of all, an engineering manager is the leader of a team. In order to be a good leader you must be close to each individual in your team. You must touch on your team and realize their strengths, weaknesses and impediments. You should be able to know how they are more productive and motivated. As an engineering manager you have to build a productive and cross functional team. You must help to create a good atmosphere. By this way you will establish strong bonds in the team.

Hiring the right people is another important topic. For hiring the right people you have to determine job requirements and what characteristics the candidate should have for the team harmony. Preparing the rubric makes the interview easy for you. Additionally, you must match the right person and project. As a result of making a good match, every person can find opportunity to improve himself or herself.

In order to be a good manager you should spend time with your team. You must schedule regularly 1:1s with your team. For an effective 1:1 meeting, you need to build the structure of this meeting and everyone should get prepared for it. Communicating clearly, being transparent, defining expectation and taking/giving feedback are the important keys for effective 1:1s. Also you must make performance review with your team and you should handle some important situations such as underperformance and layoff communication.

2. Project Management

As an engineering manager, you have to prioritize the work, make the right decision and plan the team’s work. To deliver quality products for customers, you should lead the team to be aligned with the company strategy. Besides, you have to establish a good communication with stakeholders, other teams and engineering managers. For instance, you should be able to share your progress transparently with the stakeholders and other teams. Also, you should realize the hinders that your team encounters and remove them to accomplish the projects.

To reach the goal and accomplish the project successfully, you must define the project requirements. In addition, you must manage and plan the release.

During your project plan, you should support the team to complete the tasks and reach the goal. Having good documentation in the team, making retrospective of important project, tracking the team’s metrics help you for a good project management.

3. Technical Management

As an engineer manager, you must understand what technical impediments and blockers are. At the same time you have to guide your team about technical issues. For making the plan of their career goals, you should know the bases of technical knowledge at least. You should understand and answer the questions that they asked related to their goals. Delivering quality and stable products is very important so you should help your team about their technical expectations while the team is developing the product. You must prioritize technical debts through planning the other business works.

In my opinion, you should be able to design your system; therefore, you should know how the scalable, available and reliable applications are built. Also you should be able to interpret your software development and productivity metrics together. For instance, you should observe code quality metrics and attract the team’s attention if it’s necessary. The way I see it, in order to comment on a subject, you have to know that subject, especially technical subjects. :)

Since the end of 2021, I have been hands-on leader as an engineering manager and I have gained experience about different subjects. My aim is to support hands on leadership and theoretical knowledge with each other. In addition, it is very important to ask what the purpose is and why, when starting a business.

In my first blog, I wanted to share how to define this position and summarize its requirements from my point of view. I have learned valuable things while I was reading about these three topics. Each of them can be explained very deeply. However, I have wanted to summarize these important key topics.

At the end of my article, I would like to thank some special people for their support. With their support, my journey became better, easier and more enjoyable every day.

I hope you find my first article useful. If you had any comments or questions, you could write. Also, feel free to contact me via Linkedin.

See you next time!

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Maya Angelou