Surprise! Engineering Managers Don't Get Trained.

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yeah all right just leaving CrossFit I'm dead absolutely dead this spot's kind of crappy to back out of too so I just need a a moment my entire car is fogged up too which doesn't help okay great now that I can breathe almost um I leave the window stone for just a second as I catch my breath here but we had a we had to do a bit of running today at CrossFit so I'm not good at that not good at a lot of CrossFit things but uh yeah that was hard they uh they break it down or at least today was broken down into like a strength uh like mini workout and then like a kind of like a workout of the day if you will and uh the strength portion was Finding sort of a maximum weight that you could uh call like

strict overhead press so you're not using any momentum from your legs to press a bar above your head and you have to find your uh the a weight that you can do for two reps that is your that's your heaviest and uh so we did that and then the workout that followed that was great now that you know how much you can do for two reps your heaviest you have to do sets of eight which is impossible right except uh you're allowed to use momentum so you can switch to a movement pattern that allows you to like thrust with your legs as well which in theory is great except for me uh from bodybuilding uh doing what's called a push press where you like you kind of dip a little to get some some thrust some leg drive that uh it's might the words are

going to be too strong uh to use but I I don't I'm tired and I don't know what to say instead but it's like cheating because in bodybuilding I'm just trying to stimulate my shoulders the weight doesn't really matter as long as it's um challenging so if I have to go dip and thrust with my legs I'm like I might as well just use less weight it's you know I don't need to have an overload like that for the most part so I actually don't have a good push press it's like it's almost harder for me to do so that work it was very challenging um it was good um okay uh so I'm just driving back uh stuck at a light but the thing I I was thinking about talking this morning was um at Microsoft I do uh early and career mentorship circles

and I've been doing that for a few years now uh I didn't organize the whole program I mean but like I participate as a as one of the um like one of the circle leaders so I have I'm the mentor uh partnered up with someone else and then we have some other Junior engineers and I've been doing that for like I said a few years now it's been really good um I get a lot of fulfillment out of that like I I'm happy to be part of people's like you know career Journeys especially fresh out of college or whatever it happened to be they're brand new to a big company and it's like what the heck is going on right um so I like being part of that but I discovered this past summer that there's a program that's like aspiring managers and like selfishly

I think that that is a much better uh fit for me um not that I don't enjoy the early and career stuff but it's like uh and I I do learn a lot from the people that I'm mentoring but so I want to be careful about how I say this because I don't want it to sound like it's negative in anyway but I feel like the aspiring manager one is probably it's probably more beneficial for me to be gathering insights and stuff um because as I become more senior making sure that I understand uh even better sort of that transition period where people are like hey I want to become a manager CU that's I mean I'm not saying it can't happen when you're very Junior but like it's probably not the thing going through everyone's head so uh I signed up for that program

and kind of had our first meeting yesterday I guess which is cool um I didn't realize this but one of the organizers is my first manager from Microsoft which is awesome uh so it's good to see him I I didn't work for him very long cuz I think he had he had a really good opportunity come up and and he switched to that so like no hard feelings or anything he's a great manager I thought didn't work for him long but um you know it would be kind of cool to have some more interactions with him through this uh I don't know how much we'll be interacting um but it's cool so anyway I wanted to talk about this idea about uh cuz it came up in this this first meeting that we had were like in software engineering and honestly probably plenty of other

fields um there's almost never formal training to become a manager so I'm not I'm not saying it doesn't exist I'm just saying that statistically and I I guess I shouldn't say statistically cuz I literally don't have data but from everything I've gathered and from what I've heard from other people uh it's not like you go okay I'm going to go to school to be a manager I'm going to go get the company training to become a manager go through it for a few years and then now I'll become a manager it's very much the inverse of that where you've been doing and this isn't for everyone again but you've been doing your current job very well and you have some informal leadership and then someone goes well to promote you the thing that makes sense is to get you to be a manager and then

they slap a manager title on you and then you start managing people and you have no idea what the hell you're doing because no one does if you've never done it before it's not your fault like most managers go through this phase of like what the hell is going on like you you're just sort of expected that like you had some informal leadership and now you therefore know how to you know how to uh manage people and sometimes it's not even communicated like totally clearly like you are managing people um and that's a huge problem because if you think about it for okay and this might be a little bit of a touchy subject I guess but like for I was going to say like traditionally I guess like software Engineers go to school for like you know four four five years kind of thing

um now with boot camps and stuff it's it's different I guess right you could be selftaught too I'm not trying to not trying to say otherwise uh that they're inferior or anything like that but you go for some training and you practice for probably years to be a software developer and then when your role changes to a manager there's like no expectation that you had any type of introduction to it aside from seems like you can you can talk with people which is kind of funny so uh I'm I'm excited for this program because I think that it finally gives that bit of an opportunity for people this guy's flying up beside me there he goes um no signal nothing wow those those darn Volkswagen drivers um yeah so it came up in that meeting where it's like and I should clarify that meeting was

with the organizers the the mentors so the managers and then the mentees as well so a lot of the mentors were saying like I wish this program would have existed when I was kind of becoming a manager so I fully agree right like it's literally why I started Dev leader in 2013 um and for those that don't know like my blog Dev leaders I started that in 2013 shortly after becoming a manager um I've been a manager for a little bit and decided like I need to I want to start kind of documenting what I'm learning and doing so that I I can learn and then I can help others kind of going through it and I gave up on dev leader very early um and then kicked it back off again in 2022 I guess or sorry I guess it was 2023 so last

year um but anyway like that was the motivation behind it is I want to help other people going through this so this program is perfect um I'm excited for it I got to meet my mentee um which is cool so we meet pretty regularly or we will be meeting pretty regularly and then there's like a shadowing component as well which I have to think through because um they they were very clear like we don't want you to it makes sense we don't want you to like share like private stuff right like you're not going to have um you're not going to get them to Shadow you in a conversation that's like confidential and we need to respect privacy so I'm trying to think what parts are going to be valuable to share like that because they they really want the focus to be around the

people part which I agree is the important part um it's not our role doesn't have any other aspects like there's there's project management there's architecture all sorts of other things but the if you think about the people coming through this program they're probably familiar with those other things those are things they've been doing they've not been doing the formal people leadership and management so uh that's the part they really want us to focus on but now I'm sitting here going like okay like I can't bring them to a one-on-one conversation um we have talent guides and stuff uh in in Microsoft at least in Office 365 that I go through with employees and like I don't even think I can walk him through that like I might be able to but I I can't share like people's names and stuff because like that's their kind

of privacy I legitimately don't think they'd care cuz I don't have like individuals where I'm like oh like you know Bob is terrible and Bobby like you should feel bad and like the notes like there's nothing like that it's all just like these are awesome areas to focus on for career growth like let's go get them so I don't think they'd mind but at the same time like I don't want to mess around with that boundary that's like a privacy thing so I got to put some thought into it um maybe what I'll do is like instead of spending the time in a session going through like Talent guides uh with him that are like specific to people on my team maybe I'll just take the generic one and explain my process like like stuff like that but we want to do those once once

a month so I'm trying to figure out like what that's going to look like soor I got to switch lanes here this guy is crawling we weren't even in sport mode we're driving a car not in sport mode can you believe that the audacity so we'll be doing that the the mentorship part for the aspiring managers that'll be cool and kind of leads me to my other sort of topic is like it's course creation so I'm trying to make sure I can get set up to create some courses uh sort of from a manager's lens and we announced it last last week this week this week earlier this week um so shout out to Ryan Murphy I know Ryan says he watches these so love you buddy um yeah so Ryan and I are going to be putting together some courses we're launching one hopefully

right at the end of this month which will be a behavioral interview focused for for like the software Engineers that are trying to get into to Big Tech and you know it's not just big Tech specific reality but it's kind of the the framing of it so uh really excited to be able to work with him on that uh that's going to be on dome train so Dome train if you're not familiar that's where my programming courses go and uh traditionally Nick chaps has who runs the site has only put upnet and CP related courses there so uh we're going to be trying to deliver other courses to dome train which I am I'm very excited about um I'm excited to work with Ryan on this stuff uh we we get along very well it's it's funny we we started recording uh like we had

never recorded anything together so we we wanted to sit down and do like sort of the easier videos for the course like the intro the outro uh so yeah we had to kind of like you know figure the chemistry out and stuff cuz it's you got to make it feel natural As Natural as it can be to be doing takes back and forth uh but no we showed the the intro to to Nick other Nick right and uh he thought it was great so um I think that's promising so we're going to wrap that up our first course uh but yeah it's I'm I'm excited and I think I've talked about this before but like from for my platform and I say platform as in like my social media presence I guess uh most of my content is like CP and net based because that

seems to be what people latched on to um it's like not what I want to do long term though like I love to program in CP and.net that's just like what I what I do but I don't think that's where I don't think that's my contribution back to software Engineers um it's great if people get the value out of my C stuff like I am very appreciative of that but like I've been managing teams for 12 years now so to me like I feel like I feel like my value is not just limited to CP and.net so um it's been challenging because I want to kind of I don't want to say I want to drop the c and net stuff cuz it's still very relevant to what I'm doing daily outside of work but I I kind of wish I had my audience wanting

to see more of the general software engineering stuff let me give you an example and this isn't uh speaking ill of anyone but there's a bunch of content creators on LinkedIn and and other platforms that are you know it's kind of like oh here's how I got to senior engineer and and they'll have like 10 to 100 times as many followers and I'm like I literally this is my job is to tell people how to do that and make sure that I can help guide people through that process so like hey like I got some things to say about this but uh like just metrics for me show that that's not that's not where the interest is people don't find me for that stuff in fact it performs significantly worse than other like C andet stuff uh which is kind of frustrating because I don't

know a good way to to bridge that Gap if I can say it that way so I don't know for people that that follow my newsletter And subscribe there that's weekly. deev leader.com that subscribed to that for General software engineering advice which is great so I can't say it's like zero but you know my posts my YouTube videos no one no one watches the the the general software engineering ones so that's a shame I'm hoping like obviously the the course creation has like you know monetary incentive sure uh but I'm hoping that like being able to partner with Ryan on these like Ryan does a lot of uh discussions about General software engineering advice career advice like which is great and I'm I'm excited to be able to partner with him on that because he has that uh like not weight isn't the right word

he has that he's he's kind of known for posting that stuff which is great and I want to be around other people that are doing that so I think that'll be really good like I said I'm I'm pumped to work with Ryan on this stuff uh we have uh we've been talking about like the other chuses and stuff we want to make so uh I'm not going to announce those top secret initiatives on this video not without Ryan's permission uh but also we don't have approval on any of them yet uh like in writing or anything so it would be lying if I said oh we're doing these ones and here's when you can expect them but we do plan to make more together um and I'm yeah I'm excited it's it's going to be a cool cool journey I I think for me when

it comes to course creation like that will be where all of my attention goes for chorus creation because on the car stuff it's like I got to do the the intro the Deep dive C ones like that's kind of my my specialty I would say is like helping people get introduced to to programming I've spent a lot of my career doing that you know like helping Bridge um like testing roles or people that are non-technical into programming I've spent a lot lot of time doing that so those courses were special to me but like there's already micr service courses and all these other things like I just launched my reflection one because that's a bit of a niche thing that I like to focus on a lot of reflection I have one more in mind that I want to do and honestly um like I

might just park that um or or sign it off with Nick and just like put a bar deadline on so I can chip away at it very slowly because like the amount of effort that goes into making like the time commitment that goes into making a course I guess is like you have to sit there and record it but like you have to make sure you have the material now for a lot of the reflection stuff it's easy for me to go get that kind of thing but the other course I want to do is a lot more involved on the programming side so I might I might just kind of inin Ely put that one off but uh you know once through the manager's lens I I'm very excited for yeah I think it'll be I'm curious to see on the like the Dome

train audience because it's a lot of net developers I'm hoping that that audience starts to see some of the value in like the things that aren't just code right um that's a probably another meta Point here is like something that I try to make sure I'm communicating a lot in my social media is if you want to be a better software engineer it's not it's not just getting betterer at writing code that's obviously a part of it but there's so many other skills and things you need to practice as a software engineer that if all you do is focus on writing code you're completely missing these other things uh so you know communication collaboration team work how you manage up how you Mentor others like your time management all these things are part of what you do as a software engineer and people don't I

say people don't want to focus on this I don't I can't obviously can't speak for every person but uh when I see people reaching out and asking for help it's always what's the best tech stack what's the best programming language how do I you know how do I be the best programmer ever fastest and it's like dude it just doesn't work like that there's no best programming language there's no best tech stack it's all Contex sensitive you can't shortcut it you need to be messing stuff up to learn from it that's what we all do that's okay if you start doing that sooner you'll get ahead of all of us cuz we did the same thing looking for shortcuts so there isn't right but they don't no one's ever asking how do I work better in a team how do I collaborate more effectively no

one's asking this stuff because it like people don't like to think about it it's boring it's not sexy like it's not like typical sorry this person you got to stop buddy I'm trying to back into my spot someone flew around the the corner to try and come up behind me so they're probably like what the hell is this guy doing he's blocking the whole Road cuz I'm parking pal cool I think that's it I'm home uh but yeah I'm excited there's a lot of stuff up and coming um yeah a lot of things going on so stay tuned thanks for tuning in to this um and yeah back to regular office commute actually there's going to be a ton of these videos in like 2 weeks because I think I'm going to be going into the office every single day in two weeks cuz we

have people flying in so buckle up for that take care