Great Odin’s Raven!
Have you had it up to here with the Pointy Hared Bosses ordering you around? The constant tasks, deliverables, and timelines. Isn’t it about time that you stepped up and just did that job yourself?
Think of all of the money, fame, and influence that you will have when you are a shiny new manager! It looks so easy, and there are so many perks. Besides, you have all of this Engineering mumbo-jumbo locked down right? Since you are so good at what you are doing now, that certainly has to at least imply that the next step up that corporate ladder will be just as easy since it is just a little bit more of the same stuff.
By the beard of Zeus, it can’t be that hard, right?
While the general thought processes around who would be a good manager and when that transition should occur typically coincide with someone reaching a zenith in terms of output in their current role and responsibilities, the truth of the matter is, not all good Engineers make good managers. Not only should some people not be placed in charge of other human beings, but many people struggle with absorbing the different skill set needed to be an effective boss.
Therefore, anyone who is considering seeking such a promotion should step back and answer a few questions about what they thing being a manager is all about.
It is not just about making more money.
Yes, managers wield more influence in the decisions in the decisions being made. Managers typically make more money. Managers also have to deal with people instead of computers, feelings instead of code, and have to get comfortable standing up in front of large groups of people and talking.
So if you are seeking that career progression and want to make the jump from an Engineer make sure that you understand what that role really entails and what skills you will need as a freshly minted Engineering Manager.
Can You Live With Your Time Not Being Your Own?
One of the hardest things to come to terms with when you step into a management role is that your time is no longer your own. The time to focus, to concentrate, to think through problems will be over. Of course there will be occasions that you have the breathing room to do one or sometimes all three of these actions. There will also be many more times when there is no room or time and decisions need to be made.
Being a manager often means that you will need to take into consideration both actions and potential consequences often without sufficient time to truly make an informed decision.
If you are heavily reliant on having breathing room to truly consider the ramifications then this faster pace of decision making may seem hard at first. No longer are you simply working on your own todo list and determining the best ways to accomplish the tasks in front of you. Now you are responsible for the output from a whole team of todo lists and accountable for the overall results and products that many people are working on creating.
This will most likely mean more meetings. While there are many instances and examples of meetings getting a bad rap int he business world, building skills around running effective meetings are one of the more important skills for a good manager to have.
In addition to meetings there will be additional general overhead like paperwork, vacation approvals, HR functions, reviews, and don’t forget that on top of all of this additional work you will still have a boss that you are accountable to and who will most likely expect a similar functional work output.
Any new manager will quickly need to ramp up their skills around time management and running meetings in order to navigate these fast moving rapids effectively.
Are You Ready To Be An Extrovert?
Unless you are already the life of the party, your mere presence will now impact those around you. No matter how much you want to disagree, the people that report to you know, deep down, that one day you might have to make a decision regarding their ability to continue earning a living at that organization.
That can be a heavy burden to bear.
In spite of that undercurrent resulting from the typical command structure in place for most organizations, as a manger you will now be expected to handle both individual conversations as well as larger team-focused presentations and discussion moderation functions. This is not an active role.
For people that are used to listening to their own headphones and being left alone to focus on their immediate task list, this can be a rude culture shock. However, this goes deeper than simply getting up and speaking in front of an individual or group.
Managers set the tone for a team. Their attitude and demeanor can affect everyone that they are around. Being in a position of authority doesn’t mean that you can’t have a bad day, but it means that you should be aware of how your own bad day can influence those around you. This is why many experienced managers usually seem to have a magical ability to keep an even keel in almost any situation and this skill is built through vast amounts of practice and patience.
New managers must realize that their emotions and actions carry weight beyond themselves and should at least recognize how their mood can affect others, even if they are still working on controlling how this expression is presented to others.
Have You Ever Considered Running For Political Office?
No, you don’t need to go out and start putting signs in people yards to stump for a role as an Engineering Manager. However, it must be recognized that a level of politics is inherent in this type of role. This isn’t necessarily a negative.
Politics in general, at least in early 2020, is increasingly carrying a negative connotation in regards to social opinion. Office politics have also trended towards the negative side of the balance sheet in the social consciousness, possibly due to publicly communicated stories of toxicity and the Hollywood stereotyping of office politics as degenerate through various comedies and negative portrayals.
However, this is not all bad. There are certainly adverse representations in many organizations, but the art and science of administration can produce many positive results if implemented correctly. At the heart of statecraft is compromise, which is an incredibly valuable skill to any manager.
Additional benefits of cultural decisions include holding people accountable and rewarding constructive behaviors. It can foster more productive and communicative relationships and an overall organizational cohesion and faster decision making.
Whether the political culture trends more towards positive, negative, or swings back and forth throughout the spectrum, anyone looking to move into a manager role will be operating in a new and different arena then they are currently used to. Any new manager should at least be aware that there will be new rules to learn and new methods to learn in order to get things accomplished in this new role.
How High Is Your Level Of Empathy?
As an Engineer, when a computer, piece of code, or device doesn’t do what you want it to you have the wonderful ability to go make it do what you want without worrying about how it will react. As a manager you do not have that luxury. As a manager, instead of a piece of silicon that you bend to your will, you will now be dealing with living, breathing, and emotional people.
Sure, Engineers are often even keeled as long as nobody points out that their favorite star-based fiction is less realistic and not as good as some other alien-friendly starship, telephone booth, or dragon-riding epic of grand proportions.
Yet even with the most sane, rational, and levelheaded group of people imaginable there will be conflict. There is also this thing that people have called a life that happens outside of the eight or nine hours a day that you are in close quarters together. Go figure.
In order to be a good leader you need to practice the same skills that you would to have a successful relationship with a significant other. Be a good listener. Form direct personal bonds. Be willing to see things from their point of view. Over-communicate.
Yup, all of those soft skills that you didn’t see on the curriculum at Engineering school. That is OK – these skills can be learned anytime and there are plenty of quality management level training courses out there around empathy in the workplace.
As a new manager, don’t hesitate to ask for training or go do your own research in order to improve skills in this area. They are critical the the success and happiness of your team.
Can You Fight For Your Right To Party?
Stepping into this role you are the boss now. While that means that you have the ability to directly influence the culture and fun that your team has every day, it also means that you are now responsible for the conflicts and disagreements that occur.
While we all want to have fun at the party, sometimes that is tempered by the fights that we have to deal with to get there.
As an Engineer you can pick and choose your battles or choose not to battle at all. As a manager you still get to pick and choose, but you lose much of your ability to walk away form a fight. Sure – you can always kick it up the line to someone higher up the ladder or to someone in HR depending on the circumstance. Yet it should be acknowledged that you have to make the decision to perform this escalation and after that it is your responsibility to ensure proper hand off to the next person above you.
Managers cannot bury their heads in the sand and hope things go away.
It should be noted that this may not be a fight that matters to you in this role. Yes, Software Engineers will all get up in arms about what coding standard the whole team should use, but after being in a manger role for a period of time it is harder to get excited about tabs versus spaces when you aren’t writing the code yourself and need to focus more on the resulting functionality in the product as opposed to simple spacing in the code.
As a new manager you will be responsible for these battles and their outcomes, whether you participate as one of the combatants or as the mediator. No matter what, you cannot simply ignore them and go have fun elsewhere.
How good are you at Chess?
There are many reasons why someone would want to make the jump from an Engineer to an Engineering Manager. More money and more responsibility are two key drivers. However, one of the biggest opportunities is in regards to having a bigger say in the decision making process.
As an Engineer, most decisions revolve around immediate and functional work. These are tactical in nature and deal with the here and now. How to solve this problem, what tools and libraries are the best way to complete that task.
As a Manager, the outlook goes well beyond the here and now and an overall sense of the direction being taken and the potential needs in the future is important. This is commonly referred to as strategic thinking.
Whereas an Engineer is focused on how to implement the near term items on a roadmap, an Engineering Manager needs to work to create the roadmap. This requires a larger perspective on the organization, products, and customers involved in running a successful business.
Besides additional business acumen, managers also need to think strategically about the team they manage. What is the morale on the team. What overall processes are needed for the team to be successful? How can the culture and experiences for individual team members be structured to provide the greatest fulfillment for them as human beings when they go home at the end of every day? Who is ready to step up and take on the next big challenges that the team will face?
As an Engineer, a person gets to focus on the tree around them while growth in that role helps to build an understanding that that tree is part of a much larger forest. As a manager, not only should there be an understanding of the wider forest, but also that there are other forests, other teams, out there that will in many ways impact the people and efforts of this team. Therefore, strategic thinking is a very important skill for any new manager to embrace.
There are many unfortunate situations in the business world where an upward path is assumed. The classic image for the corporate world is a ladder. Unfortunately, this leads many people to assume that just because someone is great at the role they are currently doing, they will also be good at taking on the next role upwards on that corporate ladder. This leads to many people that either don’t have the skills or capacity to be a manager being thrust into that role while being totally unprepared for the enormous difference in daily duties and responsibilities that such a change requires from that person.
Nevertheless, while many people are offered or pushed into this role, others seek it out and are looking for something additional that their current role is not providing. It is to both groups that this article is written. Anyone can ascribe to the role of a manager. It is the people that are willing to embrace these different behaviors and skills who will come out successful and fulfilled both personally and professionally. It is these people who will have the strongest teams and the most outstanding results.
As a manager, I salute and encourage anyone looking to make this leap. Good luck!
Thanks for reading.
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