This Is What Effective Engineering Management Looks Like | by Semi Koen | Jun, 2022

50 Insights Into How To Succeed In An Engineering Leadership Role

Having being a Technical Lead for many years before transitioning to Engineering Manager and then Director, I am compiling this list as a reminder of all the skills and behaviours that I had to consistently develop and exhibit to help me achieve the jump, as well as the realisations I came to while in the role, with the hope that it encourages my readers too.

Having solid grounding in engineering fundamentals is a must, but there are a multitude of other skills necessary for being a successful Engineering Leader.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, nor is it sorted in any particular order, but it certainly draws a good picture of a manager’s skillset:

1. Becoming a manager is not a promotion but a totally different job, that in fact takes you further from your functional area of expertise.
2. Getting comfortable with being in back-to-back meetings, even if it feels like you do not accomplish much at the end of the day.
3. Accepting constant context switcing and being interrupted, but also securing some thinking time during the day (or night).
4. Transitioning your mindset to becoming an enabler (and even a multiplier), not an executor.
5. Creating roadmaps (short vs. long term) and defining your strategic vision.
6. Publishing status reports — mastering KPIs, RAIDs, actual vs. planned baselines, projecting milestones, measuring a project’s ROI, etc.
7. Running Working Groups and contributing to SteerCo meetings.
8. Knowing when to build in-house and when to adapt off-the-shelf software.
9. Fostering a culture of innovation.
10. Making technical debt a recurring topic of conversation in planning meetings, without losing focus on the actual deliverable.
11. Delivering a project with a specific goal, but taking into account the big picture for the enterprise.
12. Helping your engineering teams see their purpose in this big picture.
13. Advertising your framework/application/solution to another team, so they do not re-invent the wheel.
14. Collaborating with cross-functional peers to deliver projects.
15. Letting go of your project to move onwards and upwards.
16. Understanding the “chain of command” i.e. the way authority is distributed in the organisation (a.k.a. org chart) — and especially these tricky dotted lines…
17. Identifying who the real influencers are and how to add them to your network.
18. Recognising what is in and out of your control.
19. Leaving office politics behind, without being naive, at the same time!
20. Realising that your career advancement does not only rely on your manager or your team members but also your peers.
21. Establishing your authority but also promoting your team’s empowerment and autonomy.
22. Self-assessing on a regular basis.
23. Putting the right people in the right jobs.
24. Volunteering for projects that benefit the organisation, but are not necessarily glamorous, challenging or promotable in terms of performance evaluation and career advancement.
25. Explaining technical ideas to a non-technical audience, potentially more senior than you, to inspire support or get project sponsorship.
26. Being called to give a presentation on the spot.
27. Leading whiteboard sessions.
28. Mastering the art of googling!
29. Absorbing uncertainty and stress so your team can get things done.
30. Reflecting on negative feedback.
31. Delivering negative feedback.
32. Delivering negative feedback, to your seniors!
33. Accepting that not everyone will like you, and that is okay!
34. Being able to quantify and measure — pretty much everything.
35. Understanding that leading local teams is very different to leading global teams (must read: The Culture Map, by Erin Meyer)
36. Helping your team grow, as the people you manage are a direct reflection of you.
37. Managing a team of engineers smarter than you!
38. Giving recognition to your engineers, whether the wins are small or big.
39. Being transparent with your team(s) in terms of information sharing.
40. Providing technical guidance and coaching, but not spoon-feeding solutions.
41. Determining goals, not prescribing processes.
42. Performing capacity planning and establishing a recruitment strategy to employ high performing engineers.
43. On-boarding, orienting, mentoring and evaluating new members, as well as off-boarding them, if required.
44. Becoming increasingly effective at delegation.
45. Following through — whether that is sending your direct report an article you read or your boss the material they asked for.
46. Being emotionally mature to lead a team of strong minded (and potentially difficult) individuals.
47. Resolving conflict as well as preventing it from happening in the first place.
48. Evaluating the status-quo (in terms of dev practices, team dynamics, etc) and setting new standards for excellence.
49. Encouraging your team’s input in the decision making process.
50. Overcoming reluctance to ask for help, before an issue arises.

It is a great time to be in software engineering management! In most organisations some of these skills conflate across multiple roles, but whatever your level is, you need to constantly evolve and develop. I hope my observations and lessons learnt are helpful to any would-be Engineering Leaders out there.

Thanks for reading!

50 Insights Into How To Succeed In An Engineering Leadership Role

Having being a Technical Lead for many years before transitioning to Engineering Manager and then Director, I am compiling this list as a reminder of all the skills and behaviours that I had to consistently develop and exhibit to help me achieve the jump, as well as the realisations I came to while in the role, with the hope that it encourages my readers too.

Having solid grounding in engineering fundamentals is a must, but there are a multitude of other skills necessary for being a successful Engineering Leader.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, nor is it sorted in any particular order, but it certainly draws a good picture of a manager’s skillset:

1. Becoming a manager is not a promotion but a totally different job, that in fact takes you further from your functional area of expertise.
2. Getting comfortable with being in back-to-back meetings, even if it feels like you do not accomplish much at the end of the day.
3. Accepting constant context switcing and being interrupted, but also securing some thinking time during the day (or night).
4. Transitioning your mindset to becoming an enabler (and even a multiplier), not an executor.
5. Creating roadmaps (short vs. long term) and defining your strategic vision.
6. Publishing status reports — mastering KPIs, RAIDs, actual vs. planned baselines, projecting milestones, measuring a project’s ROI, etc.
7. Running Working Groups and contributing to SteerCo meetings.
8. Knowing when to build in-house and when to adapt off-the-shelf software.
9. Fostering a culture of innovation.
10. Making technical debt a recurring topic of conversation in planning meetings, without losing focus on the actual deliverable.
11. Delivering a project with a specific goal, but taking into account the big picture for the enterprise.
12. Helping your engineering teams see their purpose in this big picture.
13. Advertising your framework/application/solution to another team, so they do not re-invent the wheel.
14. Collaborating with cross-functional peers to deliver projects.
15. Letting go of your project to move onwards and upwards.
16. Understanding the “chain of command” i.e. the way authority is distributed in the organisation (a.k.a. org chart) — and especially these tricky dotted lines…
17. Identifying who the real influencers are and how to add them to your network.
18. Recognising what is in and out of your control.
19. Leaving office politics behind, without being naive, at the same time!
20. Realising that your career advancement does not only rely on your manager or your team members but also your peers.
21. Establishing your authority but also promoting your team’s empowerment and autonomy.
22. Self-assessing on a regular basis.
23. Putting the right people in the right jobs.
24. Volunteering for projects that benefit the organisation, but are not necessarily glamorous, challenging or promotable in terms of performance evaluation and career advancement.
25. Explaining technical ideas to a non-technical audience, potentially more senior than you, to inspire support or get project sponsorship.
26. Being called to give a presentation on the spot.
27. Leading whiteboard sessions.
28. Mastering the art of googling!
29. Absorbing uncertainty and stress so your team can get things done.
30. Reflecting on negative feedback.
31. Delivering negative feedback.
32. Delivering negative feedback, to your seniors!
33. Accepting that not everyone will like you, and that is okay!
34. Being able to quantify and measure — pretty much everything.
35. Understanding that leading local teams is very different to leading global teams (must read: The Culture Map, by Erin Meyer)
36. Helping your team grow, as the people you manage are a direct reflection of you.
37. Managing a team of engineers smarter than you!
38. Giving recognition to your engineers, whether the wins are small or big.
39. Being transparent with your team(s) in terms of information sharing.
40. Providing technical guidance and coaching, but not spoon-feeding solutions.
41. Determining goals, not prescribing processes.
42. Performing capacity planning and establishing a recruitment strategy to employ high performing engineers.
43. On-boarding, orienting, mentoring and evaluating new members, as well as off-boarding them, if required.
44. Becoming increasingly effective at delegation.
45. Following through — whether that is sending your direct report an article you read or your boss the material they asked for.
46. Being emotionally mature to lead a team of strong minded (and potentially difficult) individuals.
47. Resolving conflict as well as preventing it from happening in the first place.
48. Evaluating the status-quo (in terms of dev practices, team dynamics, etc) and setting new standards for excellence.
49. Encouraging your team’s input in the decision making process.
50. Overcoming reluctance to ask for help, before an issue arises.

It is a great time to be in software engineering management! In most organisations some of these skills conflate across multiple roles, but whatever your level is, you need to constantly evolve and develop. I hope my observations and lessons learnt are helpful to any would-be Engineering Leaders out there.

Thanks for reading!