Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
63 lines (48 loc) · 4.33 KB

eng-manager.md

File metadata and controls

63 lines (48 loc) · 4.33 KB
title description
Engineering Manager
A day of an Engineering Manager at Loadsmart

Engineering Manager

Engineering Managers are responsible for organizing the team, process, and ensuring people are happy, productive, and growing in their careers. However, this is not a pure people management role. Regardless of their technical background (backend, frontend, data science, etc), Engineering Managers should feel comfortable discussing high level architecture of systems (HTTP, API, databases, message brokers, cache, etc), providing inputs based on their experience and guiding the team to achieve the best outcome in discussions.

For a descriptive - and non-exhaustive - list of tasks performed by an Engineering Manager, check the sections below.

Hiring

  • Write master docs for open positions in your team
  • Partner with recruiters during the process, being available and optimizing time-to-hire
  • Read resumés and provide feedback on them to recruiters, so that they better understand what you are looking for
  • Make sure engineers of your team participate in the technical interviews, involve them in the process, get their buy-in
  • Lead the Cultural Fit interview
  • Work with Engineering Directors and/or VPs on the offer that is going to be made to candidates
  • Present onboarding sessions and make your new hire feel welcomed by the team
  • Actively source candidates - it's of manager's best interest bringing the best candidates to the pipeline
  • Foresee possible capacity issues, bringing to upper management the need of increasing headcount

People

  • Evaluate training courses, conferences, and any other form of resources to make people grow
  • Lead the efforts of helping the team gel better, while also guaranteeing individuals feel like they are part of a safe group
  • Provide opportunities for team members to grow in their careers, being available to guide them through your experiences
  • Effectively delegate tasks to ICs and/or Tech Leads - that were agreed upon - so that they can grow without being swamped
  • Act to resolve conflicts in the team that the team members themselves could not resolve
  • Rethink team structure if the team has grown too big

Line management

  • Approve time-off requests
  • Review compensation of team members with upper engineering management
  • Do weekly or bi-weekly 1:1 meetings regularly with team members
  • Constantly provide feedback on team members' work, and also do it formally through quarterly check-ins
  • Work with HR on a plan when disciplinary and/or performance issues may occur
  • Work with ICs on their promotion packet in case you agree with sponsoring them

Roadmap Planning

  • Constantly keep track of your team's performance, find bottlenecks and act to solve them
  • Frequently assess your team's capacity, raising the need for more headcount when capacity is low and to hold on hiring when capacity is too high
  • Make joint decisions with Product when features need to be re-prioritized given your team's current capacity
  • Be accountable for the OKRs your teams are pursuing and educate team members to also keep their eyes on them
  • Pre-align with stakeholders what your teams are delivering each quarter, sharing the progress whenever something valuable is delivered

Process Execution (shared with Tech Leads)

  • Have visibility of what team members are working on now (sprint) and what will they work on next (prioritized backlog)
  • Be on top of any blockers that are preventing the team from delivering results, and work on unblocking them
  • Understand where bugs are coming from, find patterns, and work on the root causes
  • Control the growth of tech debts by constantly and responsibly having the team paying them
  • Lead retrospective meetings, create a space where people feel free to speak, distribute and work on the action items

Partnership with Product (for Product Engineering Teams)

  • Help Product Managers in defining their teams' OKRs
  • Plan quarterly roadmap, after discussing priorities, and given the technical implications of them (dependency with other systems, features, etc.)
  • Together with the Product Manager, guarantee Product Specs are well written and properly stating the "what" and the "why" something is worth the team's time investing
  • Foresee technical roadblocks that could potentially impact the backlog of their teams