🗣 Calling all Engineering Managers! 🗣
Engineering Management can be an incredibly lonely place. This is especially true if you are new to the role.
You’ve probably moved from a role where the 1’s and 0’s were the key thing you were worried about. You focussed on the technology, and obsessed over the product. You measured your output in features, bug-fixes or commits. At the end of a good day, you could say, “I did that”.
Now, you’re in a role where your primary focus is people you work with. You’re responsible for more than bits and bytes, and you can no longer measure your effectiveness by the number of bugs you fix, or by the number of commits you make. It’s a little unclear what a “good day” looks like.
Things just got, well, a little strange.
In my experience, this is the transition people make when going from Individual Contributor to People Manager. For most engineering managers, there’s little to no training involved. You learn through doing, and through the mistakes you make as you go along. In the best cases, you’ll have a mentor or manager that can help you with the change, however, it’s not always the case.
Making this transition is difficult, and having done it a few years ago, I know personally how lonely it can be to be a new manager. Sometimes you need the advice of someone outside of your company, and it’s hard to know where to turn.
I had the pleasure of working for a short time with Meri Williams, who also recognised these challenges for new (and experienced) Engineering Managers. Meri had spoken to a number of freshly minted mangers, and brought us together as a community.
What started as an email thread, quickly developed into a Slack Team. We’d now like to invite other new(-ish) Engineering Mangers or Team Leads to join the conversation.
We’re aiming to build a safe, confidential space for engineering managers to exchange ideas, information and get advice.
If you’d like more information, or if you’d like an invite, drop me a message on Twitter – @steve_codes.
Thoughts on Engineering Management 