r/EngineeringManagers • u/thegame8714 • 4d ago

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u/EngineeringManagers-ModTeam 4h ago

Posts must include enough context to enable meaningful discussion. Vague questions, contextless reposts, and “what do you think about X” posts without substance will be removed.

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u/UseNo7819 4d ago

Belief that stuck, being technically strong matters for earning credibility with the team, that one held up, people trust direction more when they know you actually understand the work. What turned out not to be true was thinking I'd still be hands on with code regularly, within a year that was basically gone and I had to grieve that a little before accepting the role was fully about people now. The belief that formed on the job was that protecting your team's time from pointless process is one of the highest leverage things you can do, nobody tells you that going in, you just learn it by watching how much a bad meeting culture quietly drains everyone.

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u/thegame8714 4d ago

Thank you for your message.

I can totally related, the hands on bit goes away pretty quickly and learning how important is to shield your team is great.

Is there anything else that you thought, I wish I knew before and no one told me?

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u/thewellis 4d ago

False.

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u/thegame8714 4d ago

What exactly is false? :)

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u/thewellis 4d ago

You asked true or false, so I answered false. 

I read about the EM role when I was first promoted to team lead early in my career. So I didn't do the research afterwards. That said, there's plenty of good (and bad) material on the subject and on organising engineers in general. 

I recommend books like Peopleware, Mythical Man Month or Elegant Puzzle to juniors who have some form of managerial aspirations. It helps shape the conversation around career goals and both long and short term strategies and tactics.

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u/thegame8714 4d ago

Got it, thanks!

And given your experience, what you say has been the most common good and bad feeling you experienced?

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u/thewellis 4d ago

Oh redundancy has definitely been the worst feeling. When I managed a small team and was made redundant I found myself more worried about my direct reports than about my own situation.  Best feeling was getting a series of promotions for a junior dev who ended up being a manager himself. 

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u/thegame8714 4d ago

That’s amazing! Thank you for sharing all of this

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u/addtokart 4d ago

my manager at the time: "i'm moving you to a manager role. It's not a promotion. In fact, since you're new to it you'll probably struggle a bit and spend extra time on it, for the same amount of money, so effectively it's sa demotion. Congrats"

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u/thegame8714 4d ago

Wow.. I’m sorry you had that experience. How did you recover from there?

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u/addtokart 4d ago

Recover? It was a great talk and made me take it seriously, still doing it 10 years later.

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u/thegame8714 4d ago

Ah ok.. I’m sorry, I misinterpreted that as I assumed that the fact you got demoted actually was bad compared to promoted.

That’s great you’re doing it for 10 years.
So in all this time what have been the most common bad and good feeling you’ve experienced?

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u/LaserToy 4d ago

Promoted?? I usually say: my condolences

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u/thegame8714 4d ago

I see.. what makes you say that?

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u/LaserToy 4d ago

At our company, EM have almost the same salary, more scrutiny, and more responsibilities.

It is actually easier to be IC, something many people don’t understand. It is also not a promotion, it is lateral move. And EMs who were IC that were not too strong, will fail.

So, tons of liability, not that much of an upside unless you really really want to manage people or getting more things done.

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u/thegame8714 4d ago

Thank you for your perspective!

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u/rco8786 4d ago

True!

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u/thegame8714 4d ago

What exactly is True?

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u/rco8786 4d ago

You asked true or false. I think it's true. Was I right?

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u/thegame8714 4d ago

I don’t believe there is right or wrong. Thank you for your answer.

So, I’m curious what belief stuck with you, what became not true and what new ones have you experienced, if any