Becoming a manager as a woman in tech

In the tech field, we lack female role models. Especially when it comes to bigger roles, as managers, CTO or even lead developer.

At Sororitech we’ve asked Mélanie Bérard, Mélyna Boniface and Sandrine Raffalli to give us the keys to, as a woman, become an engineering manager.

And it’s probably easier than you think!

What does it mean to be an engineering manager?

It’s simple: if you are managing 3 people, management should take 30% of your time!

But let’s be real, nothing is that simple.

If you are new at managing people, it will probably take more time. You want to do it right so you’ll take the necessary steps to talk with other managers, see how they are managing their teams, read articles or books about the subject… Educate yourself!

And it’s perfectly fine to take more time to refine your new position.

After some time and a good ramp up, it should look more like this:

• 30–40% of your time with your team to help them grow. (1:1, quarterly reviews, onboarding)
• 30% on delivery: planning the roadmap with your developers and product teams.
• 30% on code: doing tickets, giving insights, reviewing the PRs.
• Rituals: a few hours with other engineering managers every few weeks.
• Coaching & mentoring sessions for new managers.

That being said, some managers continue to code and others don’t!

It depends on your wishes, the delivery pace you want to commit to, your will to help build the technical solutions of your company and mostly on the urgency of your current tasks.

Your calendar will become more fragmented and sometimes you’ll have to pass on technical tasks in order to avoid becoming the bottleneck of your team.

Let’s say you take it to the next level and now you’re managing several teams.

It will depend on the maturity level of your teams but it will be mainly a lot of meetings with other managers, developers or even product managers to align yourselves on your global roadmap.

These examples can differ from one company to another. In the end, you’ll need to be well organized and present for your team members.

What to expect when going from full stack to management?

We asked our speakers to talk about their evolution from full stack to manager and as you can guess, it’s different for everyone!

Sandrine who used to be a tech lead was not planning to become a manager; it came quite naturally as she already knew her team and her technical scope really well.

Don’t forget that by becoming a manager, you will have less time to code or do any technical tasks, you need to keep your priorities straight and learn to say no!

Mélyna had a good vision of the leadership role in tech but not necessarily in management.

How to motivate people? How to handle disagreements between the members of your team?

It can bring its share of surprises:

• you have less control on your agenda,
• you need several levels of focus: your projects, the people, other engineering managers, meetings, etc

Gladly at Doctolib we have training sessions for all managers. And if you don’t have them in your company, you can still take the time to talk to other managers (we have regular peer mentoring sessions called “M-squad”) or read on the subject.

Mélanie hesitated a lot between a technical lead position and engineering manager.

Managing a team was her next challenge after having tried a few things as tech evangelist or principal engineer.

What drove her to management was the micro-vision of the scope she was in charge of, the ownership of the team and having more responsibilities.

Being a technical lead is asking to have a macro-vision but less ownership in the end.

And if you don’t want to be a manager anymore?

Come back to development! Being a manager is not more or less prestigious than being an developper! You’re going to do that job 5 days a week, so you should enjoy it!

Why are so few women engineer managers?

Let’s address the elephant in the room: there are not many women in tech.

And as a matter of fact, only 1% of europeans CTOs are women.

The issue is deeper than the lack of women leadership in the tech industry, but let’s answer a few questions nonetheless!

Are you holding off because you want first to become a technical expert?

Because if you are, please don’t.

You obviously need to be comfortable with your team scope, the impact of your delivery, the consequences of your work or the trade-offs you’ll need to make.

And most importantly, as previously mentioned, you can only dedicate a small amount of your time to leveraging technical expertise.

As every woman, you probably have already (or still) experienced impostor syndrome, overcoming it and reaching technical legitimacy to be recognised as a manager is the way to success!

Are you afraid to not reach excellence before becoming the perfect most amazing manager?

Because if you are, please don’t.

If you don’t have any role models or other female managers in your organisation or even in your acquaintance, reach out to tech communities.

Talking to other managers will help you realize that nobody is perfect and that you can learn from your mistakes and others’ evolution.

Try to find the right community for you, the tech world is full of safe spaces for you to talk in a caring environment!

• For CTOs and tech leaders
• Meeting women in tech
• Slack communities: Women On Rails, Ladies of Code, Duchess France

Are you afraid of experiencing difficulties as a woman ?

Because if you are, please don’t be afraid, be aware.

You can encounter sexism, exclusion or even be treated with contempt.

Some people can consider that because you are a woman, your technical skills are poor or even non-existent.

If your company is a safe place for women then no worries, being a woman is not an issue. Be sure to be well surrounded and to have trustworthy people around you.

People won’t react differently because you are a woman manager.

The only real issue you can encounter is… being new to it! Especially if you are younger than your managees. But all you have to do is ramp up and educate yourself on the subject :)

So… Can you become a manager?

Yes of course you can! Just take a leap of faith and go for it. 🚀

In the end, if you decide that you want to become a manager, the question you want to ask yourself is : what kind of manager do I want to be?

Do I still want to deliver code?

Do I want to mostly mentor my team?

Should I be more involved in recruiting?

Find your path, it’s up to you !

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