The skills and capabilities required to be an effective first-time engineering manager are often orthogonal to those of an IC. These range from people management through to delivery of projects. We report on recent podcasts featuring Ben Greenberg, Matt Stratton and Shopify’s James Stanier as they share practical management patterns for prospective, new and seasoned engineering managers.
A recent edition of the Arrested DevOps Podcast invited Ben Greenberg, head of DevRel at Fuel Labs, to discuss his experience in leadership and the challenges faced by first-time managers. Clear differences exist between the skills required for progressing into management, compared with other leadership roles. Talking with Matt Stratton, the director of developer relations at Aiven, they discussed the skills required to be an effective manager homing in on local context.
Citing Lindsay Holmwood’s classic article It’s Not A Promotion — It’s A Career Change, Stratton and Greenberg discussed the confusion which individual contributors (ICs) often have around leadership roles, and the need to disambiguate between management and technical leadership. Stratton has had to coach senior ICs to appreciate that management requires a range of orthogonal skills. These are skills which require specific training, such as «people management, career coaching and engagement coaching.» He has seen this successfully addressed through the use of internal training programs delivering management and director-level skills.
GOTO’s Book Club recently published an interview with James Stanier, author of Become an Effective Software Manager. To aid new managers, Stanier used «prescriptiveness» to reduce cognitive load and provide «one way for doing things.» Gergley Orosz chatted with Stanier about the book’s patterns which cross a range of skills, covering hiring, «interacting with humans,» one-to-ones, delegation, growing staff, running projects, and using politics positively.
