Engineering Manager

Who To Promote? A Manager’s Dilemma

A manager was faced with the difficult decision of who to promote, with two candidates expressing interest. After testing their commitment and assessing the team's feelings, the manager decided to promote the more experienced candidate, despite lacking leadership potential and people skills. This turned out to be the wrong decision, as the other candidate left the company and the promoted candidate did not work out as a manager. The manager learned that it is important to make the right decision, even if it means losing something, and to not make decisions based on the path of least resistance.

Software Development Life Cycle: A Product Guy’s Perspective

The author joined a new company in a product role and found that the software development life cycle was not being followed. To address this, the author implemented changes to the software development life cycle, including explicit instructions to stakeholders, project tracking with Jira, and workflows for design. These changes resulted in increased productivity and output quality, and other PMs followed the author's initiative. The author also learned lessons about the importance of following a software development life cycle and the difficulty of changing people's habits.

Building and Formalizing a Career Ladder in a Startup

Small startups often lack career ladders, but formalizing them is not recommended for teams with less than 30 employees. To help engineers grow their skills, managers should identify the skill sets they lack and line up appropriate training and incentives. For those on the management track, they should be given function, task, client, and project management responsibilities to master before taking on human management. Soft skills and training courses should also be lined up to help organize and structure employee progress. Ultimately, it is important to remember that every person is an individual and requires an individual approach.

Achieving Alignment and Efficiency Through a Technical Strategy

A fast-growing company was facing a lack of clarity and confusion about future decisions, leading to inefficiency. To solve this problem, a technical strategy was developed that detailed what should and shouldn't be done to be successful in the long run. This involved reaching out to different people to better understand the reasons behind slow decision-making, tailoring presentations to suit two different audiences, and establishing a process for teams and a "design and architecture" group to collaborate on designs. Lessons learned included the importance of securing buy-in before decision-making meetings, reviewing past decisions, customizing content for different audiences, and documenting decisions and guidelines.

How to Help Your Reports Grow and Pursue Their Goals

This engineer became a manager and used their experience with different managers to create a Career Development Plan (CDP) and Transition Development Plan (TDP) to help their team members manage their career growth and transition to new roles. They also encouraged their team to have mentors and provided them with opportunities to reach their goals. They learned that as a manager, they should be responsible for their team's happiness and normalize the talk about career.

Building Communities of Practice

This article discusses the problem of communication breakdown as a company grows, and the actions taken to address it. A Community of Practice was created to connect people working on similar problems, and Confluence was used as a tool to enhance collaboration. The concept spread to other departments, and people grouped around different niches in the software development department. The article also highlights the importance of having a community lead to fuel enthusiasm, and the need to create a safe environment for people to share their presentations.