Engineering Manager role

Management roles are there to balance the needs of the organisation with the engineering teams ability to deliver

The role naturally focuses on on the larger goals and challenges facing the engineering teams, supporting the engineers to solve specific challenges using their own skills and experiences (that is why they were hired)

Meetings

one to one are regularly held with direct reports and those people the engineering manager reports to, ensuring there is good working relationship between the respective people.

• direct reports focus on supporting that persons ability to thrive within the company and identify actions to help

• stakeholders to ensure their concerns are understood and they have a realistic view of current capability from engineering teams

Engineering team meetings may occasionally be joined to review how effective the format is to those involved, or should a wider issue be addressed (especially in retrospectives)

• standup can highlight issues with motivation and team cohesiveness
• retrospective can help identify action items that the engineering manager can actively support or help direct others to support

Performance reviews supported by one-to-one meetings

Where performace reviews are applicable, include the review as an aspect to raise with one-to-one meetings with direct reports throughout the year.

The need to complete a review should be raised as early as possible in one-to-one meetings and regularly raised (even if only briefly) to ensure supporting tasks are carried out to swiftly complete the review at the appropriate time.

Creating regular journal entries can speed up the completion of a self-written performance review submission

Journal

Write regular journal entries and encourage others to do the same by sharing the journal across the organisation (except for private notes)

Use the knowledge sharing tool for the organisation, e.g. Atlassian Confluence, Notion, Tettra, etc.

TODO: example jornal, e.g. from Billie & 100 days of code

Management anti-patters

micro-management is highly ineffective, demonstrates lack of trust, highlights poor communication and lack of management skills. Shows lack of understanding of the needs of the business and engeering teams.

overt control suggests a lack of confidence, demoralises the team, incurs a lack of trust and engagement by team under control. Drives inefficiency, stifles agency and creativity.

emotional pain degrading and emotionally attacking a person has no place in a positive relationship.

dominating by tearing people down to (alegedly) build them up in the (percieved) right way is an act of emotional tourture and highly counter productive in the long term.