jeremy.marzhillstudios.com/content/engineering-managment-is-hard.md

+++
title = "Engineering Management is Hard"
date = 2020-04-19
[taxonomies]
tags = [
    "teams",
    "management",
    "culture",
]
+++

# Learning to be a manager

I'm about 80% manager these days. Some time ago I took on the role of Manager
at my current place of employment. This is a role I would have sworn I never
wanted to have 7 years ago. But life experience has a way of changing how you
feel about certain things. Before joining this company I experienced one of the
least competent engineering managers I had ever worked with. Up to then I had
had some sub-par experiences but never true incompetence. I realized that I
needed to better understand what an engineering manager needed to do. I needed
some survival skills and the best way to do that is to learn on the job. If I
got a chance to experience some of that in future roles I decided I would take
the opportunity. So here I am with a role that is 80% managment and 20%
technical. In theory I think it was intended to be 50/50 but reality differs
quite a bit.

> Engineering Management is hard 

Engineering Management is **hard**. I don't think I realized just how hard
until I experienced it for myself. Some of the problems are fundamentally
unsolvable. The most you can hope for is to manage and mitigate the fallout.
You can't just hack your way around people problems and management has a
considerable amount of people problems to solve. I've been learning a lot in my
on-the-job training experiment. I'd like to talk a little about what I've been
learning.

# Communication

> You are a conduit between the needs of the business and the capabilities
> of the engineering team

In many ways being an engineering manager is about being a translator. You are
a conduit between the needs of the business and the capabilities of the
engineering team. Walking a fine line between what the business needs to stay
in business and what it takes to create scalable technology is not an easy
task. You have to tell both sides no sometimes. They usually don't want to hear
it when you say no. I've learned that honesty, transparency, and tact are the
among the most important attributes of a good manager.

## Honesty

It's important not to promise what you can't deliver for either side. Don't lie
to your engineers about when and how you'll be able to tackle technical debt.
Don't promise procedural changes that you can't realistically deliver. Be
honest about what you are empowered to accomplish. Be realistic about the
capabilities of the team to the business. Don't oversell and don't undersell.
If you lose the trust of either side you will be ineffective in your role.

> People appreciate it when you are honest about your failings
> and diligent in addressing them

Come clean when you mess up. You aren't any more perfect than the next guy.
Sometimes you'll drop something on the floor. When it happens acknowledge that
it was your mistake and work to address it. People appreciate it when you are
honest about your failings and diligent in addressing them. It gives them faith
that you will be honest with them and they can trust you.

Being transparent when you can and being forthright about it when you can't be
transparent are important. Everyone like to understand the reason for decisions
that they don't like. If they are able to put those decisions in context it
goes a long way toward calming them and helps them to see whether there is a
light at the end of the tunnel or not. They understand that you can't always
share everything with them but they appreciate it when you are honest about
that handicap and when you share what you can.

## Tact

Being honest doesn't imply you need to be harsh. It is possible to deliver
the truth without triggering an unnecessary negative emotional response. Your
goal should be to ensure that any emotional response is derived from the factual
content of your communication and not the method of delivery. This can be harder
than it sounds. Trying to eliminate any emotion from you delivery can be just as
bad as including negative emotion.

> I have found that focusing on empathy is helpful

I have found that focusing on empathy is helpful. Understand how your audience is
going to percieve the news you need to deliver. It goes a long way when it's clear
that you understand the impact the news will have. Empathy can inform which type
of emotion you should inject in your delivery.

Be sure to listen as well. In many ways listening does as much as to give people an
impression of tact as your delivery does. Follow up you delivery with an opportunity
to listen and see how it was recieved.

# Team Culture

By default culture flows from the top down most of the time. And for any team
you are manage, you are the source of that flow. You have an outsize impact on
your teams culture. If you are negative then your team will tend to take on a
negative attitude. If you are positive then your team will tend to take on a
positive attitude. I've been thinking a lot lately about what you can do to
create a good team culture.

## Identity

Identity forms an outsize part of your teams culture. What do you need your
teams engineering identity to be? Should you be a quality at all costs team or
are a ship it and fix it if it breaks in prod kind of team? Should you value
unit testing or do you get more value from Manual QA? Is CI/CD in your DNA or
are weekly planned deployments better? What about developer tooling? Is it
everyone for themselves or is tooling a first class part of your teams
identity. In your technology choices do you tend toward build or buy?

> Your goal is to be in a position where you don't need to micro-manage your team

To be effective you need to be clear about your teams identity. This will give
guide rails for your developers and team members. They will know what mental
framework they should use when making decisions. It frees you from having to be
involved in the minutia. Your goal is to be in a position where you don't need
to micro-manage your team.

## Narrative

As a manager you need to provide narrative to your team that is positive,
believable, consistent, and evolving.

The narrative should be positive. You don't want a narrartive that is framed as
us vs them. Something I've seen before in engineering organizations. You want
it to focus on how the team can be productive and make the business successful.

> If you aren't honest in your narrative then the cracks will start to show

A good narrative is believable. A narrative that everyone can buy into. Telling
a story about where the company is going and how the team will be able to
contribute to it does wonders for team cohesion. Make sure that the story is
accurate and not a fabrication. If you aren't honest in your narrative then the
cracks will start to show and people will start to share their own narrative. A
narrative that in many cases leads to bad places for the team.

> If parts of your narrative are in conflict with itself then the
> team won't know how to be self directed

An inconsistent narrative, will kill productivity. If parts of your narrative
are in conflict with itself then the team won't know how to be self directed.
They'll be backtracking all the time and it will appear to them that the ground
is shifting under their feet. If you craft a good narrative then the team will
have a shared story. They will know where they fit. A team with a consistent
shared story doesn't surprise you and is self-directed.

> Acknowledge that there is change and we need to adapt to it

Narratives need to change and evolve. When this happens be transparent about
it. Acknowledge that the environment is changing and we need to adapt to it.
Acknowledge when something isn't working for whatever reason and get consensus
on how to change it. Don't try to shoehorn the changes into the old narrative.
Be transparent that the narrative has changed.

# Potential Impact

> You can be the difference between a good work environment
> for employees and a bad one

If the above challenges appeal to you then you might be interested in some
managerial roles. The impact you can have on a team and a company in many ways
make it worth it. You can be the difference between a good work environment for
employees and a bad one. You have the potential to remove barriers to
productivity for a team if you do it well. If you do it poorly though you could
be the reason a team's productivity stalls. The risk/reward here is
considerably different than any other role I've had. I can do great damage or I
can be a force multiplier like no other.