What Engineering Managers Should Do (and Why We Don’t) • Lena Reinhard • GOTO 2019

[Music] I have a very complicated relationship with birds when I'm in the street I I really really hate pigeons they're they're fast movements make me super nervous on the other hand though I really love watching swarms of birds leave the area in autumn I also like when they return in spring though a few months ago I read an article which talked about whooping cranes the whooping crane is the tallest North American bird and it's named for its whooping cause it's also endangered largely due to habitat loss there are only 600 of them left in the entire world 300 of them spent their winter in Aransas National Wildlife Refuge on the Gulf Coast of Texas the author of this article I read is named CJ Hauser and she was doing research for a book that she was working on she joins some researchers and other volunteers on a data-gathering expedition and in her article she wrote here is what I learned once I started studying whooping cranes only a small part of studying them has anything to do with the birds instead we counted berries counted crabs measures water salinity measured the speed of the wind stood in the mud it turns out if you want to save a species you don't spend a lot of time staring at the bird you want to save you look at the things that relies on to live instead you ask if there's enough to eat and drink is there a safe place to sleep is there enough there to survive in the same way as research on whooping cranes works I believe that there are two fundamental things that we need to look at when we think about engineering management as a practice we need to understand the people that we work with and we need to look at how to build an environment which they can thrive in but how do we do this in this talk I want to answer questions like what are the challenges we see in engineering management today what do humans at work and how can we as engineering managers make sure to provide it what makes teams high-performing and how do we as managers support organizations and eventually what does all of this mean for what engineering managers should do let's talk let's start by talking about some of the challenges in engineering management today I believe that to understand what makes a good engineering manager we first need to look at what we think makes a good engineer software engineering is still a relatively young profession it's a running joke in our industry that titles don't mean anything but it's also true the requirements and what it means to be a junior senior staff principal engineer or any other title you can think of they vary greatly I also really wish that there were less job postings along the lines of seeking junior engineer with five years experience but what makes a good engineer is the technical skills is it their ability to design systems is it knowledge of specific frameworks programming languages or something else entirely and how do engineers grow beyond where they're at today a common scenario in many tech companies is that engineers start out in their career they increase their technical skills gain more responsibilities move up in the hierarchy and eventually become a manager but should the ultimate destination of energy risk engineers career be a management role or something else and what should the role of a manager look like to support those engineers and their growth I was looking for a new engineering management role last year and initially I was in touch with over 50 companies and this question was one of the most recurring ones the expectations that these companies had towards engineering managers varied greatly and many of them were expecting a lot people management of 8 to 14 or more diverse reports as well as technical leadership technical decision-making hands-on coding everyday project product and process management but what should these management roles look like how can managers Grove and how can organizations make sure to set up managers for success and what's the impact of this ambiguity around engineering management on the managers in my career so far I've interviewed more than 100 engineering managers for roles on my team and one question I like asking candidates is why they're looking to make a change a theme in many responses I've gotten has been overwhelmed people talking about how in their current roles they're wearing way too many hats they have too many responsibilities that they need to juggle at all times and I feel like they're not able to deliver well on any of them are always stressed out worst case even burned out and aren't doing justice by their teams or the people in them these are many more stories I've heard from fellow engineering managers can be summarized as just too much now if you are in a role where you're doing all those things and you're able to do them well and you feel good about it congratulations you are a unicorn or another mythical creature of your choice but if you're in such a role and you're constantly stressed out and feel like you're not doing any of your responsibilities justice I also want to let you know I hear you and you're not alone in this if you're an organization though and you're looking to hire such a unicorn I just want to tell you already they're pretty hard to find and some people even say they don't exist now these overloaded roles also have impact on engineers in 12% of cases the manager is the primary reason why people leave companies but its leadership in 28% and development opportunities at 52% and all of those are really tightly linked with the questions we've raised so far organizations often struggle to figure out what makes good engineers how to grow them and how to make sure to have managers support them well eventually many engineers get frustrated with their managers and the career development opportunities as well as the company as a whole this is ultimately unfortunately still a common theme in many tech companies right now I think that all these questions and challenges are serious issues and I would like to propose an alternative perspective today when we talked about cranes earlier the main conclusion was that we need to understand the people that we work with and how to build an environment they can thrive in this is why for shaping engineering management as a practice I want to propose a different human centric approach which focuses on people's needs now my own thinking of this has been influenced by people like Laura Hogan cami Fournier and marko rodgers and many others who've been thinking in this direction for many years it's also been impacted by my own background I'm not an engineer and my work has always been about the people and the environment they exist a network so what does human centric engineering management look like the environment in which we operate in as engineering managers consists of three major factors we support engineers we work with teams as well as organizations each of those has their different needs and needs to be addressed in different ways this is why I think of our role as a service or support role we work at the intersections of different areas we're involved in different areas and we need to translate between them and support their respective needs I want to talk about our support role as engineering managers by focusing on these three supporting organizations supporting teams and supporting individual engineers and let's start by talking about individuals when we think about people at work I want to take one more step back and look at how our brains work our brains are set up to be highly responsive and real sensitive to threats the same mechanism that used to protect us from wild animals still exists today our Magdala is almond shaped it's located deep in our temporal lobe it's on the lookout for anything in our environment that could be a threat when it senses danger it makes a split-second decision begins the fight-or-flight response this fight-or-flight response triggers the release of stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline into our bloodstream our heart races we sweat we shake we start feeling nauseous and we can't think clearly now we'll hopefully rarely encounter a wild bear in the office that could trigger that response but there are still other threats in our modern workplaces research has exposed six human core needs that humans have including at work the performance coach and trainer Paloma Medina coined what she describes as the biceps model all six human core needs these needs motivate us in our behavior and if those needs aren't met we sense that they're threatened or we lack in some areas our amygdala will perceive a threat and will initiate fight-or-flight response this is why understanding these core needs will help us shape our understanding of the humans we work with and how to support support them best the first core need is B for belonging as humans we strive to be part of a community of like-minded people where we understand each other and support each other we want to feel cared for and happy and healthy ourselves and we seek the same for the people around us we also feel like we that we're not being other discriminate discriminated against or marginalized belonging is really important to me personally I love working in a distributed team but I also really enjoy seeing my team in person every once in a while it makes me feel more connected to them and there's AI for improvement we also seek to continuously learn improve and grow in areas that matter to us and also in areas that matter to our team or our company this is one of the needs that matters to me the most as well I work with a management coach to help me grow in my career I also love reading nonfiction books to always learn something new and I started taking piano lessons last year and still have a lot to learn in that area then there's c4 choice we desire having choice control and autonomy over important areas for us we also want to be able to make decisions about those areas in a previous role that I was working in I took a lot of work on to drive organizational change but ultimately the control I had over my domain was really limited due to organizational issues eventually it led to me leaving this this role ian biceps for equality we seek the feeling that our ability to contribute but also our access to information money time and other resources is fair and equal for everyone not about not just ourselves but also the people around us we also want everyone's needs to be treated as equally important equality is a lot about opportunity we currently have one team that's distributed across three major geographical areas and to help everyone have equal access they switch the timings of their team meetings every week so that everyone has an opportunity to contribute then there's p4 predictability we look for certainty safety and stability in our lives we want to feel certain that resources like money time or information are available to us in a way that we cannot do our job well or achieve our goals we also want goals strategy and direction to be consistent and not change too fast or at all times I've been leading teams and fast-growing startups for the last couple of years and it can be a challenge when there's a lot of change going on to instill some sense of predictability in teams I also had to work on my own ability to deal with change so I'm able to support others better through it but also deal better with it myself lastly there's s4 significance deep down all of us seek meaning importance and status this includes for example where we're at in a hierarchy and whether our work and our title or role are perceived by people around us whose opinions matter to us it also means being appreciated for our work by people whose opinions mean something to us a while back a teammate of mine sent me an email talking about some projects I've been working and let me know how much that work meant to them and how the projects had impacted them positively this meant a lot to me and I still think back of it really fondly so this is the biceps model of six human core needs belonging improvement choice equality predictability and significance why is it so important for us to meet those human core needs at work though feeling that these needs are threatened will put us in fight-or-flight mode which is literally stressful it harms our ability to think clearly it impacts our productive productivity as well as our well-being stress has vast negative short-term but also long-term effects on all of us this is why not meeting the core needs has such high cost for organizations it harms the people on our teams and will ultimately harm our business and these needs must always be balanced if we're a hundred percent connected to a team culture or idea at all times it can also get at odds with our need for uniqueness and significance if everything is changing constantly stress as many of us out but if everything is always predictable it easily gets boring and demotivating and not all of these aspects matter to everyone equally as mentioned I deeply care about belonging and improvement but some of the people on my team matter care much more about other factors so to start out I would like to encourage you to think about what matters to you personally knowing what motivates us and what we need the most will also help us understand our own responses emotionally to situations and it also helps us reflect on our position and our own what drives our our own our own thinking much better now let's use those learnings about human core needs to translate the biceps model into action and especially when we're in our thinking and practice about what our role as engineering managers should be about specifically starting out with supporting engineers the foundation of being a good engineering manager is getting to know the people that we work with and understanding what's important to them we can't guess what motivates others or what they feel threatened by and I think one of the most powerful tools we have as managers is asking good questions listening observing taking note of what motivates our teammates and really digging into their responses to our questions is the basis for doing our jobs well when I start working with someone I'd like to have a longer conversation with them about what matters to them what motivates them or what's frustrated them in the past open questions are especially helpful asking things like what did you think about this project or how can we improve our incident response these kinds of questions with follow-up questions at it can be helpful to really dig into what drives people I also usually up gather some questions before I meet with my teammates one-on-one so I'm prepared and I can guide the conversation towards understanding them better over time I've also built a kind of kit of one-on-one questions that I like pulling out when I need some inspiration asking questions also helps us adjust our leadership style to the people we're leading and it also enables us to make sure that they feel understood and heard which is a really important pillar of inclusion and belonging now people are full of surprises which probably everyone knows who's ever met a person I once received a message from an engineer on my team who was deeply upset about a specific wording used in a product release note to customers at first I was really surprised I'd been aware of discussions about that release note but I didn't understand their strong reaction to be honest but I got curious in what was going on and we ended up talking it turned out that they had agreed upon a specific wording with another team who was responsible for that but it ultimately gotten overruled by someone with more power than they had it made them feel helpless and made them feel like they weren't able to positive impact on our customers in their domain and they felt threatened in their core needs for choice and equality I've experienced situations like these many times in my career people reacting emotionally in a way that I hadn't expected at all and especially as I've moved on to managing several teams and now leading an organization the potential for surprises has only increased just through the number of people I'm directly or indirectly managing now in such cases it's really easy to complain about entitlement or how dare people have opinions on such banal things but all of us are humans including at work to start I think surprises like these are really good opportunity to reflect on our own position my own perception and experience aren't Universal and my privilege impacts the way I see the world and there's also my role which impacts how much information context I have access to and it also impacts how I perceive what's going on at work what I perceive as no big deal or logical or rational can be enormous threats to other people around me such cases where people react in those kinds of unexpected ways are really good opportunities for us to focus on human-centric responses like giving them time to unwind or giving them an opportunity to talk through it it's our job as managers to understand and support people and communicate in such ways that their needs are met understanding better what motivates our teammates also helps us nurture significance there is a lot of power in meaning and knowing where people are having an impact can be a really great motivator for all of us this means for example helping engineers understand how they work connects to the bigger picture how it ties into company goals how it's important strategically for the organization how it helps users or how it supports other teams we can also serve us our significance by involving our teammates in the decisions we make feeling that decisions are fair and equitable is an important component of the biceps model as we've seen when we make decisions it's helpful to ask everyone for their opinions at first and really listen and genuinely take their opinions into account now it won't always be possible to go with what everyone wants but we can still do a good job at contextualizing the decisions we make understanding why we did or did not make a certain choice and helping people understand that their feedback has been taken into account I also think feedback is a really important goal for all of us as managers we should ask for feedback regularly because it's the only thing that helps us adjust especially in our leadership style and in the in the actions we take giving feedback to engineers regularly helps with predictability it helps people understand where they're at our expectations towards them and puts them in a position to course-correct quickly if needed praise specifically helps nurture significance a lot we have a slack channel at circle CI called gratitude where people share praise for others and it's one of my favorite slide channels there it's really great being part of a team where people do kind things for each other help each other out and where that's becoming visible in such way we can also support engineers by investing in their growth that's a core need in itself we can start by asking questions to understand where they want to go in their career and what meaningful progress looks like for them we can also set development goals and assign them tasks that help them grow further we can also encourage them to take classes visit conferences read books take online training or help each other out through mentoring knowledge sharing and skill sharing to help with growth I find coaching and sponsorship really helpful coaching and sponsoring ourselves or encouraging others to do it are really helpful with significance coaching specifically is focused on guiding people towards the finding answers themselves it isn't directive and it doesn't offer immediate solutions to problems people are approaching us with this way coaching helps people train their leadership skills but also problem-solving skills it also increases learning resilience and self-management if you want to get started with coaching the book the coaching habit by Michael Bungay Stanier is a really good starting point and then there is sponsorship which I think all of us need to do more of many years ago I had a manager who was really invested in me I was in my first real job and he saw that I was eager to grow and learn he put my name forward in a discussion with his peers about an exciting project and made convince them to take a chance on me and let me take the lead he also gave me lots of constructive feedback along the way with specific examples of what I could improve in later on he also made sure that I got another opportunity to join a different team he and I stopped working together many many years ago but he was hugely influential on my career now I want to encourage you think back in your own career and whether you've had someone who did something like this for you who connected you with others who put your name forward who use their influence to make a difference in your career be that person for someone else be invested in their growth in lifting them up and put your weight behind them in their success I've been trying out different approaches to sponsorship for example knowing that someone was interested in public speaking sending them CFPs reviewing their submissions and giving them feedback on their talk preparation with other people I invested in helping them move into new roles and get supported along the way or take on the lead and exciting projects getting invested this way into someone success can make a really huge difference it definitely did for me as we've seen so far the foundation of our work as engineering managers is getting to know engineers keeping them connected with a purpose giving feedback and investing in their growth now let's build on this by talking about how we support several people our role in supporting teams what makes the high-performing team research suggests it's five key factors and you may be familiar with those the first one is psychological safety which means believing that we won't be rejected and feel free to express our work relevant thoughts and feelings to the people around us it also means believing that others won't think less of us if we make a well-intentioned mistake or ask for help in psychologically safe teams people are able to learn and solve challenging problems together there's also dependability teammates reliably completing quality work on time we have structure and clarity everyone on the team understanding expectations goals and accountability high-performing teams also have meaning they have a find a sense of purpose in the work or the output of it and they know that their work has an impact you've probably heard of this model before and I have great news for you all the above connects with everything that we just discovered in the biceps model all human core needs are represented at the team level as well the research on high-performing teams shows how meeting human core needs has impact on teams as leaders by understanding and responding to people's motivations we create the basis for them to feel free to express themselves and we provide the structures meaning and impact the team's seek this is the basis for high-performing teams so what can we do as managers to foster all those aspects on the teams we work with growing up my family used to help people in our community a lot with construction projects at their houses or with building homes even and in my work as an engineering manager this is something I've been better I've been thinking back to a lot the way I think about our workers managers is that we create the structures to help people work together in such way that everyone is able to do their best work we provide building blocks for others to Raeleen on and rely on and as engineering managers we are like mortar we're connecting those structures teams and people and we hold them together but also identify and fill gaps where it's needed after all our work isn't much about us it's about the people and teams we support we build structures to help others shine building those structures enables us to define how we work together and what to expect from each other so let's start looking at some of the ways in which we can build and support structure the first point is building relationships strong trustful relationships between teammates are one of the foundations of highly successful teams for our distributed teams that circles the AIA we build different structures to help teammates do that for example regular pair programming rotations but also fireside chats some portion of our agile ceremonies as well as engineering talks an engineering book club but also team gatherings in person we can also build structures around how we collaborate our engineering department circle CI has doubled in size three tiers in a row now and over this time we've moved to a more streamlined engineering delivery process for all teams but still we leave it to the teams to decide how exactly they implement those on their day to day some of our teams also have defined how they interact and communicate with each other especially the teams that have fast time zone distribution some use emoji to communicate and escalate blockers status and others rely much more on synchronous interactions structures can also be really helpful to mitigate the impact of getting blocked at work I think all of us probably know how frustrating getting blocked and being stuck is and the thing is if things feel inefficient or we get blocked it really impacts our need for improvement and this is why putting a pathways to help people get unblocked can be really really important things like setting up regular pair programming rotations putting up escalation paths for people to get help when they need it or helping people support each other through knowledge sharing can be really helpful with that structures are really important especially when it comes to hiring and staffing all of us as managers have a lot of power when it comes to making those kinds of decisions not just hiring staffing but also when we think about who we assign things to and who gets which tasks and responsibilities for us specifically it's important to attend training around biases and work through these biases ourselves but also hold each other accountable with our peers we also need to make sure that the hiring processes that we set up are inclusive for a diverse set of candidates to ensure that we make their decisions and these are just a few examples of the structures we can build as managers any structure we build we need to make sure to build with equality in mind and we need to continuously improve those together with our teams this is part of building a culture around continuous learning which is an important sign of psychologically safe teams we can help teammates learn from each other through code reviews mentoring or knowledge sharing we can also use retrospectives to discuss and improve how we work together I think blame does post-mortems especially are a really great tool to foster learning culture understand problems and drive toward solutions it's important to keep in mind that the way we discuss failure on our teams will shape the culture that we have and it will fundamentally determine whether people feel safe or threatened on our teams in addition to building culture we also need to ensure alignment and involvement with our teams we need to communicate strategy direction and relevant tactical details to them it's almost impossible to over communicate those but sometimes honestly it can be hard to know how much to communicate and win and how much openness is helpful especially when there's a lot going on you may have heard of the role of a manager being a protector for their team or a fire shield or a shirt umbrella for the people who watch the good plays here it's important to keep in mind that all with our teams is to help them stay aligned and it's not about make-believe it's our job to communicate openly transparently and help our teams focus so communicating well means finding a balance between predictability and choice this also means finding the right timing to let our teams know what's what they need to know without blindsiding or overwhelming them and sometimes that's pretty hard at writing teams towards alignment also means setting clear expectations goals with them helping them understand their progress and keeping them connected with the purpose of their work this helps us nurture all five all six human core needs belonging improvement choice equality predictability and significance at circle CI we're going to use okay ours as a company to help our teams understand how they work connects to the bigger picture during quarters we look at our progress against goals in weekly planning meetings with teams as well as in company and department-wide meetings so we just covered our role as engineering managers in being border and building structures building culture and nurturing alignment with organizational goals so let's see how we can support organizations effectively I believe that we need to use our powers managers to drive organizational change the way that we relate to our organizations may differ some of us work for small companies other Pro others for giant corporations and for some of us it may also feel like we're not able to have impact at the larger scale this is why it's still important to keep in mind that our role is about creating an environment in which engineers can thrive including and how we work at the organizational level I wanted to focus on two aspects here driving organizational change and staying aligned and connected when we talked about being mortar earlier and above what it would being what fills gaps and also connect structures I want to revisit that thought in order to be effective as managers we need to really make sure not to just fill increasingly large gaps with increasing amounts of mortar instead we need to build further structures and advocate for organizational change to get the larger structures around us improved especially when it feels like improving those is out for reach for us out of reach for us personally this can mean for example that we create roles for four things on our team that we've been working on on the side but that there's increasing need for it can also mean advocating for more inclusive practices in our organization or being an ally for members of our teams it also can mean advocating for more clarity on engineering manager roles having conversations about what engineering management should be like in our company and what we look for when we hire engineering managers I also want to talk about managing up because it's a really important and often overlooked part of our work managing our own managers is a useful skill and it can sometimes be pretty difficult I don't want I'm not going to ask you to raise your hands if you've been there driving organizational change also means making sure that the concerns that the engineers and our teams have are heard at the higher level and that we use our power to make sure that our engineers and teammates have a voice in the rest of the organization I also want to talk about structures again at the organizational level as you've probably guessed so far I'm a firm believer in structures and standardization especially when it comes to any work that involves people it's always important that we make room for individual needs but I think having structures and frameworks to rely on as managers really helps us hold each other accountable but it also limits the blow of our own biases and knowledge gaps it also helps us level the playing field and build inequality for the people on our teams and eventually build a better environment for the people we have in all in my current engineering management team the way we go about this is that every quarter we pick some high-priority projects that we want to work on together to improve how we work as an organization most recently we've worked on our hiring process incident remediation escalations process and last year we developed an internal career growth framework for engineers this is our engineering competency matrix and we use it to set goals and expectations for the engineers in our organization but also as a basis for conversations about learning performance and it informs our job descriptions and hiring processes as well it's become the foundation for how we think about learning and growth and you may realize that the screenshots ends at principal engineer level and does not end in a manager level if you're interested you can find the matrix under this link but these circles the I - matrix and ask me later about it if you're interested in talking more as managers we also need to make sure to stay aligned and connected to our organizations needs goals direction and strategy if we stay aligned ourselves it helps us fulfill our roles in helping teams and engineers aligned and connect it it also helps us stay accountable ourselves and told the people around us accountable I said earlier that our role is about translating and balancing needs across the three levels that we work with and I want to acknowledge that when we're supporting engineers teams organizations there will be cases where it at least looks like the needs of those are add-ons these types of situations are an important part of our support role as managers and often times they're about concerns around goals priorities or sequencing of work and other business needs in such cases it's important to again focus on people's core needs get curious provide more context and make sure that the people who have such concerns are heard sometimes though we may come across larger questions and other cases with questions that go beyond them I have faced a few of those situations in my own career for example questions around pay equity or inclusion challenges some of those situations I found really difficult to navigate especially because in some of those it felt like my job was on the line in those cases what I ultimately ended up thinking about was and still is the question what kind of leader do I want to be this is the question that I continue asking myself and it's directly related to all the questions we've going we've been going over in this talk what should engineering managers do there are no simple answers what kind of engineering management roles right for me right for you well at least in parts depending on the organization's we're part of its size growth stage or the organizational structure and many other factors there's also large ambiguity in engineering management itself which is one of the key differences between engineering management and engineering roles for a lot of the work in our field there are no straightforward answers let alone resolutions being able to handle this kind of ambiguity can be difficult and it's one of the most important and often hardest parts of our job at all times we hold vast amounts of uncertainty while also trying to make forward progress and even though there aren't a lot of straightforward answers to what it means to be an engineering manager there's something all of us can do regardless all of us can focus on getting to know the people that we work with what motivates them understanding what goals and progress rewards those looks like for them and using feedback to help them cause correct we can get invested in their growth we can support them through coaching and sponsoring and we can build teams that are based on psychologic that are psychologically safe places build on structures that are with built with equality in mind where people find meaning in a shared purpose and we can use our power and privilege to drive change in the organizations with part of so no matter where you are no matter what your role and company are like and how big or how small your team is I want to encourage you to rethink your approach to engineering management think back to the whooping cranes make people the center and focus of your work and build on that to create an environment in which they can thrive lead with humbleness empathy and lots of curiosity and above all ask yourself what kind of leader do I want to be thank you [Applause]

Channel: GOTO Conferences

Views: 34,283

Rating: 4.8087854 out of 5

Keywords: GOTO, GOTOcon, GOTO Conference, GOTO (Software Conference), Videos for Developers, Computer Science, Programming, GOTOber, GOTO Berlin, Lena Reinhard, CircleCI, Human Factor, Leadership, Technical Leadership

Id: Q_bJVokYLRI

Length: 40min 41sec (2441 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 13 2020

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This is a 40 minute talk from GOTO Berlin 2019 by Lena Reinhard, Director of Engineering at CircleCI. The full abstract can be found below:

Technical leadership. Hands-on coding. Process management. Project management. Delivery. People management. Architecture decisions. Product oversight. Hiring.—With so many things on an engineering manager’s plate, is it any wonder that many great engineers flounder as engineering managers?

Yet, in order to retain engineers in a competitive job market, you have to invest in building and supporting your engineering managers. Individuals don’t leave jobs or companies -- they leave managers who aren’t equipped to support them.

In this talk, I will explain how our organisations currently set engineering managers up to fail, and what we need to change to help them, and their teams, succeed. I'll share personal anecdotes and examples of how I got my teams on the right track through:

• Redesigning team and organisational structure
• Clarifying roles and responsibilities
• Outlining clear paths for growth for engineers and managers (and growth paths that don’t include management)
• Rethinking how to hire engineering managers, and what to look for when you are looking for leaders of technical teams

What will the audience learn from this talk?
You will leave with a clearer understanding of what progressive, people-centric engineering management should look like, how to establish it in your organisation, and how rethinking your approach to engineering management will help your engineering teams thrive.