What Engineering Managers Should Do (and Why We Don’t) • Lena Reinhard • GOTO 2019
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- Опубликовано: 19 июн 2024
- This presentation was recorded at GOTO Berlin 2019. #GOTOcon #GOTOber
gotober.com
Lena Reinhard - Director of Engineering at CircleCI
ABSTRACT
Technical leadership. Hands-on coding. Process management. Project management. Delivery. People management. Architecture decisions. Product oversight. Hiring.-With so many things on an engineering manager’s plate, is it any wonder that many great engineers flounder as engineering managers?
Yet, in order to retain engineers in a competitive job market, you have to invest in building and supporting your engineering managers. Individuals don’t leave jobs or companies -- they leave managers who aren’t equipped to support them.
In this talk, I will explain how our organisations currently set engineering managers up to fail, and what we need to change to help them, and their teams, succeed. I'll share personal anecdotes and examples of how I got my teams on the right track through:
• Redesigning team and organisational structure
• Clarifying roles and responsibilities
• Outlining clear paths for growth for engineers and managers (and growth paths that don’t include management)
• Rethinking how to hire engineering managers, and what to look for when [...]
Read the full abstract here:
gotober.com/2019/sessions/104...
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Наука
"When surprised, become curious"
What a great advice!
Great talk. Kudos to Lena for introducing the biceps concept into the management glossary. I found it helpful and valuable.
probably the best talk i've heard, biceps model is genius
Great talk, thank you for sharing your insights!
Someone's good manager is someone's bad manager - good/bad is relative - It's important to understand whether a manager can really get ahead and look after their team, and make them feel better about the work they are doing, the cause their serving, and the value they are adding - and it's a constant learning/development process.
Well done Lena, thanks for sharing! 👏
A very insightful talk. She covers a lot of ground in a short time and gave me something to think about.
Awesome Presentation ! A booster for me.
That was a great talk - thanks for sharing your insight
Almost every place I worked, tended to purposely isolate me. Still today, I don't know why. But yes, it is really hard to feel appreciated and even accepted under such conditions. Besides, you have little chances of making connections and even growing in your career.
Yes, the sense of belonging is at the top to perform your best as an employee. Isolation makes you feel like you always have to perform and makes it impossible to be yourself.
What can managers do to help you feel less isolated?
@@alvinfong1449 managers should help with alignment in a regular basis. Some people lose their sense of belonging when their ideas are not heard or their talent is undervalued. Kudos to Lena for introducing the concept of BICEPS for management.
If it is almost every place, maybe some reflection would be in order? I'm not saying it condescendingly. Sometimes, it helps to understand how others perceive us and make adjustments accordingly.
the easiest way to control people is to keep them scared, isolated, disoriented. it is far from the most effective ways to manage, but it is a way many managers tend to choose unfortunately. it is likely because they can’t assert their dominance in any other way. such managers are likely not experts that can actually help you, like, helping for real … so, they tend to put you in a box and treat as a resource. they also not interested in making you a self-managing individual, because then their role will become obsolete …
@@illiakailli Thank you for this comment. This explains behaviours of at least few of my past managers. I never understood how they have become managers in the first place.
Great speech!
BICEPS-Core Needs beauifuly explained. Thanks.
Very well explained!
That was an outstanding talk. Thank you.
Very insightful talk packed with the right advice and factors to consider... all essential for white-collar motivation
Please share the presentation link.
Hm, interesting. OKRs, competency matrixes, etc. Is this organization Agile or is it Waterfall?
If everyone gets OKRs and deadlines to meet them, where is Agility in that? They are totally fixed at what they are doing.
21:04 a public gratitude channel is dangerous, despite the good intentions. It incentivizes helping others for something in return, turning favors into a transaction, and allowing a company-wide "social credit" system
Well read
Very nice talk
It would be great if the microphone had noise reduction. Nowadays one is used to that tech, now i cannot focus when i realise of these side breath noises. Also, a post processing audio could be a solution before uploading the video
this presenter is nice and all, delivery of this talk is very appealing and it really hurts to write a critical comment … but it has to be done: to effectively manage engineers you have to be an engineer, there is no other way around that, there is no fast-track to become a good manager of this kind. if you don’t understand nuts and bolts of stuff that your team is doing - they simply won’t respect you, or wont take you seriously. you will be an easy target for manipulation, deceit and your view of a situation in a team will be distorted to a great degree. people are territorial creatures and startup environments are often very competitive, so people will fight for power ferociously, but much of it will happen in your blind spots, at places where you can’t see clearly: code, technical documentation, the way infrastructure is configured, etc. People often exercise power in subtle ways through not sharing information or just sharing what’s minimally required for accomplishing specific tasks. this talk is designed to look ‘nice’, but it doesn’t address very important problems related to team power dynamics and manager’s poor levels of technical expertise. I hope that one day presenter starts looking more into what her team members are actually doing on a daily basis, what technical problems they are struggling with, so maybe one day she can come and help … like, for real
Maybe I missed it, but I didn't hear her say otherwise.
@@tieTYT she didn’t mention these kinds of problems, as far as I remember. Please correct me if I’m wrong. My point is that for many ‘non-technical’ managers main focus is to make everything look nice on the surface, so they often optimize for looks and it happens because they’re often not able or don’t care to look into the technical details. And when something blows up - they often shift responsibility to their subordinates. IMHO a good manager should be able to implement the whole system by themselves, if given enough time. And only for the sake of speeding things up they should delegate work to others and guide/support them through the whole process. There should be no excuse like “oh, but I’m not technical” … and it hurts to hear that phrase so often. If one is in a business of software engineering - they have to be technical, otherwise it may end up in a very bad place. But usually those problems are not very nice to bring up, because it will throw so many people under the bus. Many modern managers are not in the business of inspiring their teams, but in the business of making them feeling guilty and insecure. There are definitely good technical managers out there and I hope that presenter is one of them.
@@illiakailli-- Agreed. This is the problem I'm having currently at my company. My direct supervisor is a brilliant engineer, but the top brass are all sales people with no engineering degrees.
As a software tech lead I think you're right. Around the 10 minute mark is when I started to doubt the talk... the slide about BICEPS, this is feels like MBA Management textbook stuff... Engineers will won find such a manager relatable or respectable. She did nothing wrong, this is just the brutal truth.
I agree. Engineering managers should work daily to keep up the engineering skills, understand the engineering pain points and try to alleviate those off junior engineers by guiding them and being a mentor. All the pointers presented will work out only when the engineering manager has excellent technical skills that makes him empathetic to their team members.
9:33 The BICEPS model
BICEPS - what you should practice and will never experience from your superiors as a manager.
What I really hate about these kinds of talks is that they're so divorced from reality, particularly with regards to ignoring the existence of objective 1) narcisstics, 2) sociopaths, 3) incompetent idiots above, 4) incompetent idiots below, 5) bad situations inherited from past mistakes. The best kind of engineering leadership talks reference characters from culture e.g. Dick Winters from Band of Brothers.
My manager is more like a people manager and not technical, he gives out the most stupid ideas and expects developers to implement them
@niggu an engineering manager is not a technical lead, so don't get the two twisted
@@sirAlexander_T depends on the organization ...
@@vadergrd either the organisation doesn't understand the differences between the 2 roles or some poor individual has been roped into wearing multiple 'hats'
Give an example of one of the stupid suggestions!
@@Chrisbajs TDD :) developers dont like it
I thought all this was common sense and everyone thinks the same way. No?
what they eventualy become managers??? NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!
What?
@@Chrisbajs say what
She sounds so nervous!
Why does that matter?
@@rexsheridan5534 It's distracting.
She does. What I don't understand is: why? She's obviously very knowledgeable and very successful in her leadership roles, just listening to this talk I imagine she must be a fantastic leader.
Standing in front of large groups of people is intimidating for most people (at the best of times!). This can be compounded by the fact that English doesn't appear to be her first language, although I found her to be thoroughly clear in her content delivery.
Yes, she is nervous and anxious, but it does not matter. Thanks to that little speech defect, the presentation sounds honest and not overcooked.
9:31 The BICEPS model