How I ended up here?
My Path into Engineering Management
My memory hasn’t faded yet.
It was a cold 🥶 winter day. I was sitting in one corner of the office and looking at an error screen that says “your deployment failed…”. I was trying to re-deploy the application and stumbling over Stackoverflow the zillionth (approx 3*(Zi + 1) zeroes!) time in my decade-long software engineering career. A slack message came from my managers’ manager and it reads, “Hey, I would like to talk to you real quick in 5 minutes”. I know either I’ve done something terribly wrong to put my job at stake or something extraordinary, which I’m sure is not the case.
“Ralph is leaving in a couple of months as he put down his papers yesterday.” - Ralph was my manager. My reaction was almost absent and I nodded in disbelief. He continued, “Would you like to be the engineering manager?”. I was taken aback as I wasn’t ready for it and was completely clueless. I asked him “Are you sure? - I may need more time to think about it as I never had plans to get into management”. He replied “I’m sure you can do justice to this role and grow in our organization. Take your time, think about it and let me know”.
That’s where it all started. After a series of confrontation and self-doubt, I decided to give it a shot. Years down the line, I was already into the deep dark woods of engineering management.
Like a harsh winter, the first few months were harsh for me to transform into a management role from an individual contributor (IC). Gone are the days where I used to sit on my couch for hours and happily code all day long alone. I didn’t mean that I wasn’t happy after becoming a manager. It’s safe to say that my happiness has been redefined.
It’s safe to say that my happiness has been redefined after becoming an EM.
It’s a weird feeling to hand over some of my IC responsibilities to one of my peer IC who will be reporting to me soon. Working relationship with them will change from, “Hey mate, Can you please review my pull requests?” to “Hey, Can you please complete your performance review as the due date is nearing to have the conversation?”. You have bigger problems to tackle than writing code, in the form of prioritization, evolving processes, motivating and caring for your people, ultimately being responsible for delivering value to your organization through your team’s work.
Eat. Sleep. Prioritize. Repeat
You can imagine yourself as a CEO of your own team. A to Z. I can see your eyes go wide open in amazement and uncertainty.
Worry not, you’re in good company with other readers of this newsletter who are either curiously reading what’s in it for them in the engineering manager role or rolling up their sleeves to learn tricks who are already helming the coveted title.
Do you want to become an EM?
Now to the most important question to answer - Do you want to become an EM and is it worth it?
Are you a fairly experienced engineer who wants to get into management? Management comes naturally to you and always dreamt of becoming one? or it just happened like me? - it can be for any reason but you have to do it right.
Engineering Manager is a high stake role as you can make or break a team. You’re responsible for driving your team autonomously in the right direction and course-correct whenever needed. People look up to you for guidance and direction, and to act as a mentor for their own career and day-to-day responsibilities at work. It's a role where one day you feel like you’ve moved a mountain 🏔 and the next day you feel completely helpless.
It's a role where one day you feel like you’ve moved a mountain 🏔 and the next day you feel completely helpless.
EM is not some superpower that you can do everything on your own - you just can’t. Unlike the universe, you have limited time and energy. Your calendar will be a living proof of that. First thing that you notice once you become an EM is, your calendar gets filled up quickly with meetings. You should focus working on top priorities and don’t shy away from delegating and saying no to unimportant ones. It’s hard at first but you have to get better at it and you will.
Decision making will become part of your day to day work. You have to make well-informed, unbiased and tough decisions for your team’s cause. You should hold yourself accountable and own the consequences as your decision will be questioned and challenged.
Your role is quite significant especially in rapidly growing organizations where you have to adopt and evolve your team’s processes and to keep them motivated and engaged in the midst of frequently changing priorities. You have to work closely with different expertise and job functions like product managers, designers, business teams to collaborate and build what’s most important for your organization.
Take a sticky note, write “Building a happy, productive and high performing engineering team that delivers” in bold and stick it in front of your desk as EM’s Mantra. Everything that you do revolves around this central idea and it's so deep that I’m writing a whole book to be published Q4 ‘24 expanding this one line.
EM Mantra
Leading a happy, productive and high performing engineering team that delivers
Well, that’s my honest shot at describing what EM will do. If you’re looking for challenges at a larger scale and maximize your impact, this coveted title is for you. I bet you will not regret it.
EM Starter Kit
I wish someone had offered me a starter kit 🍱 to get started into the world of engineering management. Here’s my present to you - An EM’s Starter Kit. I’ll be publishing this starter kit for anyone who want to get started with engineering management and excel at it.
Stay tuned 🤞