Dr. Mario's 2nd 🧠

đź“– Become an Effective Software Engineering Manager

8 min read

Why did I want to read it?

In preparation for ✍️ Déjame sin trabajo, por favor

What did I get out of it? Raw highlights

Searching online for advice was even worse: a mixture of contradictory information. Some of it was written by people clearly pushing their coaching services. Some felt wrong, old fashioned, or irrelevant (View Highlight)

The word management has a bad rap. Management may conjure up images of stuffy people in suits carrying stacks of papers in leather binders. Layers of bureaucracy. Pointless activities to maintain high-paying jobs in a hierarchy. Leadership, however, may be the look you’re striving for. Being the inspirational figure that others look up to. (View Highlight)

You form your snapshot by taking what you’ve learned from the team, your manager, and yourself and overlaying them like a Venn diagram. Then you can begin to work out where particular observations fit into the intersecting circles. (View Highlight)

Which frameworks and ways of working are acting in the best interests of your time? Is the goal of being a manager to deal with the chaos so that others can achieve productivity at your detriment? (View Highlight)

I’ve never written a line of code that has impressed people more than my ability to remember things because of this system (View Highlight)

Allow yourself periods of the day where your time is not to be interrupted by meetings. Block out regular chunks of time to focus. Simply put an entry in your calendar, usually of a few hours in length, called “no meetings please.” (View Highlight)

The opposite to the Rule of Seven

Overcommunication. Saying the same thing over and over again is inefficient and can frustrate other people. If you find yourself having to communicate the same thing repeatedly, then why is that happening? Should that information be captured more formally in an email? Is there something wrong with your delivery that is making the message not stick (View Highlight)

As you get to know your manager, you’ll want to begin to lift the lid on their world (View Highlight)

“So what’s been on your mind this week?” • “What’s your biggest worry at the moment?” • “How are your other staff doing?” • “What are your peers working on? (View Highlight)

Every week, take thirty minutes to note down the main activities that you and your team have been involved in, how you feel about them, and what decisions you’ve taken or need to take (View Highlight)

This is typical too for personal OKR

Writing weekly summaries is the closest thing that I have found to rubber ducking in a managerial role. Often when I’ve had multiple issues whirring around my brain, the act of committing them to paper has enabled me to be more logical and clearer in my thinking, thus unlocking the solution. Sending them to my manager weekly holds me accountable, so I always perform this summarization exercise. (View Highlight)

The higher up the org chart you go, the more that you’ll find that the day-today concerns that you are dealing with are more abstract, uncertain, and just plain messy (View Highlight)

you’ll need to be the person that digests information and filters it down in a more palatable way. Sometimes you’ll need to ensure they don’t hear it at all. You need to contain the wobble that could affect your team. (View Highlight)

Imagine, if you will, Jell-O molded in a conical shape with a wide base and thin, pointed top. This is your organization (View Highlight)

As a manager, you’re going to deal with some stressful times. It’s part of the job. No person is perfect. No team is perfect. No project is perfect. However, no matter how high your tolerance or your inner calm, you’re going to go through periods that really push you to your breaking point (View Highlight)

Your ability to deal with bad situations is your true test as a manager. And there will be plenty of bad situations. There will be late projects, unexpected scope changes, and pressure, pressure, pressure. (View Highlight)

round off a tough project and allow some time to rechar (View Highlight)

So remember it’s not that people get slower as a company gets bigger; it’s that productivity per head decreases when those staff are part of a larger organization (View Highlight)

You work through others. That’s your job. It’s what effective managers do. (View Highlight)

Try to carve out 10% of your time each week to do absolutely nothing other than let your thoughts emerge. Yes, seriously. You need to block out time in your calendar in which to do nothing. Get away from your desk. No meetings. Maybe even get out of the building and go for a walk. You need to create the conditions of that shower where you suddenly solve the problem, or that drive where you needed to pull over on the highway to write down your brilliant idea. You need to get your R-mode firing (View Highlight)

It’s important that the organization acknowledges that being promoted into a new position is not the only way that employees can receive meaningful raises. For example, high-performing individuals should be able to increase their compensation at a faster rate than those in the same role performing as expected (View Highlight)

“You betcha. Nothing better than the grind. Making a success of yourself. Missed the birth of my son because I was raising a VC round. We went hard!” “Erm, OK,” Ben says. “But how did your wife feel?” “I have a strong woman who takes care of business at home so I can take care of work,” remarks Wayne. “That’s what strong American couples do!” (View Highlight)

A bit naive

You’ll always have parts of you that need some work. For example, you might need to work on your written communication or on keeping your cool in frustrating situations. However, these are weaknesses that you should find by being yourself, and then you get to apply those fixes to yourself as well. This is why management can be such a rewarding profession: not only do you get to work on improving a team, you get to work on improving yourself. Not bad for a day in the office (View Highlight)

As you turn your attention to the busy city outside of your window, the questions begin to arise. Are you working for the wrong company? Should report erratum • discuss (View Highlight)

you be getting in early at a startup instead? (View Highlight)

One could argue that increasing your impact as a manager requires managing an increasing amount of people, and startups don’t have many people at all. Additionally, many startups are focused on finding their product-market fit rather than establishing their internal hierarchy, so without that, what good is management? (View Highlight)

The relationship between the CTO and VP engineering at a startup can be summarized in the matrix diagram on page 333 (View Highlight)

you’re well placed to continue the journey upward (View Highlight)

using startups as an opportunity to land that first management position, or perhaps, after you’ve become comfortable and tenured with management, making a giant leap into being VP engineering (View Highlight)

However, there may be people out there that think that management has no place in startups and small companies (View Highlight)

Other alternative governance structures include Teal [Lal14], which promotes self-management guided by consistent practices, purpose, and values (View Highlight)

Management doesn’t mean bureaucracy. Good management is a light touch and continued collaboration (View Highlight)

Those who are able to adopt a management mindset can provide a muchneeded counter-balance to the speed at which startups can grow and become chaotic. Whereas the company and the CTO may want to press forward with the pedal to the metal, those with management mindsets can do so while keeping an eye on process, efficiency, team organization, communication methods, quality, and organizational scalability. Management skills can maintain equilibrium (View Highlight)

Reinventing Organizations (View Highlight)

You may be wondering why we’re covering guilds if they don’t need a manager to form them. The reason that they’re worth covering is that they’re another useful tool for you to suggest to your staff to solve common problems, which in turn increases their confidence and autonomy. You’re also well-positioned as a manager to help connect others as guilds get off the ground. You may also want to get involved yourself! (View Highlight)

Graph View

Backlinks