Moving from Engineer to Engineering Manager
Answering the usual suspects of questioning.
I have recently moved from an Engineer to and Engineering Manager and have had many discussions with people in the industry around the transition who have been more then happy to share their thoughts on the move with me (even when I haven’t asked for it). I will attempt to answer the usual suspects in a way I wish I could articulate without pizza in my mouth at a meet up.
“People are hard”
This is the number one comment I get from people when I explain what I do to people. To say “people are hard” in a dismissive way is showing you either don’t care for hard stuff or you have an understanding that you have to put in work to be able to manage people effectively. Each person works in a different way and to be effective you need to work at an emotional level to figure these things out.
Building relationships and trust with individuals is paramount to learn the best way to communicate with them. Having the ability to adapt the way you interact with people will enable you to have well formed discussions and form a relationship with them. Applying this approach to teams adds another level of complexity to understand the way the team ‘works’ and establishing processes that work for them and not for everyone.
Perhaps the “hard” part comes from people who have tried their hand at people leadership and have found the feedback model is different (emotional not tangible). Its hard to validate success when managing people. No unit tests to run to validate the function you are doing. The textbooks about leadership are all fluff and hard to validate, but we should stop saying “people are hard” because we might be turning great people away from important roles by those who they deem their seniors.
“What do you do as an Engineering Manager?”
Something I have found within the industry is the role expectations of Development Manager or Engineering Manager vary massively from place to place. Something I did while considering the move in my career and one in which is suggest everyone to do was to enquire about the jobs being advertised before applying. For example, asking “What are the role expectations of the job listing?” It was quite strange for me to enquire about a job without applying, however it gave me massive insights into the company. I had no idea what an Engineering Manager was in its entirety at the time, and a few places I spoke to clearly didn’t know either. But when I found one that gave me the response that resonated with me, it clicked. I needed that job.
Some of the varying Engineering Management roles include aspects of systems architecture, head of technology, recruiter, code evangelist, HR manager, hiring manager, process manager, coder, mentor, trainer, agile coach, team facilitator, event organiser, coffee maker and friend.
“I could never leave code”
The thing is, you don’t have too. There is no hard and fast rule that says ‘once you do a certain job, you have to do this and only this’. The long and short of it is, I started out my career loving code and liking people. After filling out the grid I have written about in the article: Time Management: A powerful tool to show us where to spend our time I realised those two things had switched, so I figured I was doing myself a injustice to not give it a go.
You let it go as much as you want to ‘let go’. I have stepped away to fully emerge myself into the intricacies of people management and how we work as a collective. I love tech, I love what impact it has on society and what it enables us to do. I still dabble in code, I have time to learn new languages and get a better understanding of teams and their decisions around using various languages — this is what I’ve come to learn that I enjoy.
There are a lot of opinions out there about the move from Engineer to Engineering Manager and why people should or shouldn’t do it. I am just wanting to encourage an alternative. Find out what it is from those that are hiring. Not what is written in the job ad. From the mouth of the people who really understand the value of the role in their business.
Don’t let the opinions of others determine your career. Follow what you love to do, allow that to change over time and move forward.
