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The manager's function is not to make people work, but to make it possible for people to work.
— Tom DeMarco[1]
A curated 
list for software developers to transition to an engineering management role. Compiles advice, anecdotes, knowledge tidbits, discussions, industry small-talks and rants. A bibliography of sort, gathered the last few years while transitioning my career from a software engineer to an engineer's manager. And later from a manager to a manager's managers (you all love recursion right? ʘ‿ʘ).
- You're a developer and wonders what it feels like to be a manager?
- You just started your first position as the leader of a team?
- You're stuck into the day-to-day operations of the job?
- How can I move up to the next level?
You'll find answers in this guide! It stands out from generic leadership and management literature, by providing uncompromising insights and practical advice. It will bootstrap your journey into the management career track, from a technical background.
This list helps in the transition to management, with a progression from general to specifics. It starts with an overview of the role, then describes its requirements, and its position relative to others. Then we details the day-to-day tools of the trade, both organizational and behavioral. At last we discuss some of the dark sides of the job.
Contents
- Engineering to Management Transition
- Building Teams
- Roles
- Recruitment
- Onboarding
- Motivation
- Culture
- Cognitive Tools
- Team Dynamics
- Engineering
- Remote Work
- Meetings
- Facilities
- Product Management
- Project Management
- Agile
- Key Performance Indicator (KPI)
- Objectives and Key Results (OKR)
- Training
- Communication
- Career
- Compensation
- Politics
- Re-organizations
- Health
- Setbacks and Failures
- Exits
Engineering to Management Transition
The first step. The hardest. How to requalify oneself from an Individual Contributor (IC) to a front-line manager.
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You always been a developer. Being offered a management position is not a promotion. It is a change in career.
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17 Reasons not to be a Manager - An article to discourage the faint-hearted recruits.
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Advice to New Managers: Don't Joke About Firing People - “The second you became their manager you forfeited the right to joke around in any capacity about their employment at the company.”
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Advice to new managers - 9 fundamental principles of the behavior required to be a great manager.
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Mistakes I've Made as an Engineering Manager - Mistakes: “1) Thinking people give feedback the way they want to receive it; 2) Trying to do everything yourself; 3) Communicating something one time is enough; 4) You have to have everything together all the time.”
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Why It's Easier to Manage 4 People Than It Is to Manage 1 Person - “Avoid at all costs the combination of: new manager, 1 report, report is new-to-industry, manager is not a subject-matter expert.”
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Going from Developer to Manager. What should I know or learn?
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How to be a Manager – A step-by-step guide to leading a team - A full, detailed guide on modern management practices.
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On being an Engineering Manager - Some of these points needs nuance, but others are a good taste of things to come for first-time managers.
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Responsibility vs. accountability - The biggest difference between manager (accountable) and engineers (responsible): “'Bad things' happen for the person accountable, whereas the person responsible can move on to the next project.”
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“A computer can never be held accountable. Therefore a computer must never make a management decision.” - An IBM slide from 1979.
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“It is a job where your goal is to try disappoint people most slowly.” (source).
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“So the trick is basically to put them (your direct reports) in charge, not you. You have the supporting role, they can request things from you. But the goal needs to be very clear.” (source) - A recipe on how to work with your direct reports, from a section of 7 habits of highly effective people.
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The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey - The author use a parable in which problems are monkeys. Unexperienced managers let monkeys being transferred to them, accumulates on their back and compounds. From this, the book teach you how to change from taking on responsibilities to delegating them so you don't become a bottleneck.
Building Teams
You got the title and the pay grade. Congratulation! This doesn't make you a manager yet. Whether you inherit an already existing team or have to start from scratch, you'll need to practice the art of building (and consolidating) them.
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Building and Motivating Engineering Teams - What DO engineers want? Money, purpose and respect.
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What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team - “Google's data indicated that psychological safety, more than anything else, was critical to making a team work. (…) The behaviors that create psychological safety — conversational turn-taking and empathy — are part of the same unwritten rules we often turn to, as individuals, when we need to establish a bond.”
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Paper we love: Software Engineering Organizations - “The practice of software engineering, and its history is, itself, a complex study in humanity, coordination, and communication.”
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Developer Tropes: "Google does it" - It's cargo-cultish to imitate the big names in our industry as a path to success. Instead, the take home from this article “would be that managers and other leaders should be like ecologists; who measure, observe and nurture their ecosystems. Doing so will help build a unique workplace that will yield great results.”
Roles
On the profiles, attitude, behaviors, and expectations between developers, managers and executives.
Executives
Executives are the senior/highest management layers of a company. They reports to a board of directors in bigger companies, or directly to the shareholders in smaller ones. Leadership is expected at this level. As a manager these are the people you report to.
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What do executives do, anyway? - Paraphrasing Andy Grove's book, High Output Management, “the job of an executive is: to define and enforce culture and values for their whole organization, and to ratify good decisions.” The article also details the failures modes of a CEO: forcing his own decisions downstream, or various ways of not resolving conflicts.
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Executives ratify decisions made on the spot - Refines the concept above adapting Tolstoy's thesis to business.
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Army Leadership and the Profession - Establishes and describes what leaders should be and do.
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US Air Force's Strategic Leadership Studies - A reference of leadership's competencies and skills.
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What Only the CEO Can Do - “1. Defining and interpreting the meaningful "outside" of the company; 2. Answering the two-part question: What business are we in and what business are we not in? 3. Balancing sufficient yield in the present with necessary investment in the future; 4. Shaping the values and standards of the organization.”
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How CEOs Manage Time - A study on what CEO of large companies spent their time on, and how. Opens a new window into what leadership is all about and into its many components and dimensions.
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Operations and Internal Communication Strategies For Effective CEOs - After insisting on the importance of context and narratives, the author provide an interesting template (good for inspiration) of ritual and recurring internal communication devices.
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Regis McKenna's talk at Silicon Valley Leaders Symposium - “These are the things we (marketers) used to do with individuals and bodies. They've all become automated. The CIO is the marketing chief now.”
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Narcissistic CEOs Weaken Collaboration and Integrity - “The prototypic visionary leader profile is so similar to that of a narcissist, if boards aren't careful, they're going to end up choosing people who are narcissistic as CEOs”.
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“Hiring isn't the challenge. The challenge is finding people who can be effective while working for executives whose only qualifications and training are narcissistic levels of self confidence.” (source).
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“The CEO positions himself as a controlling, micromanaging individual at the center of everything. This makes it possible for the CEO to intercept financials and other crucial numbers en route to people who might catch on.” (source) - Or how fraud can endure at the top level. That's generally why you need a board of directors as an oversight.
CTO & VP of Engineering
In tech companies these roles are critical, and the frontier between the two is often blurry.
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CTO vs VP Engineering: What's the Difference? - CTO manage a small staff of hackers. VP of Engineering lead an organization of engineers.
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Want to Know the Difference Between a CTO and a VP Engineering? - Another way to look at thing: placing these roles along the “Process Orientation” and “Technical Capability” quadrants.
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The different skills needed to be a successful CTO - The premise is a little misleading, as what is detailed there is the journey, in a startup, of the technical founder growing with the company to become a CTO. At which point the position described in the article is not CTO, but VP of Engineering.
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Hiring a VP of Engineering? Use This Framework - “How do I hire a VP of Engineering? After more than 20 years, eight companies, and thousands of hires, I'm starting to suspect this may be the wrong question. A better one is, What is a VP of Engineering?”
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“That's usually about the time I nope right out of the interview” - Bad signs of a CTO trying to recruit an engineering manager, or the perils of not believing in hierarchies.
Engineering Managers
Managers came in all form and shape, and the title and daily activities varies a lot depending on companies.
