Engineering Managers That Don't SUCK - What Traits Do YOU Look For?

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hey folks we're going to go to Reddit for the topic today this one is what expectations do you all have of your managers and they write wondering what others expectations of their managers are we know or at least think we know what their expectations of us as are as devs but curious if the reverse is true is this something that ever discussed openly on your teams or is it generally left unsaid in general I expect my manager to have my back trust me to do my job and support me in that endeavor what else do you all expect I think this one's really good um I think that for especially for like Junior people maybe they don't really think about this because they're new in their careers maybe it's not something that's really crossed their mind um and I think even for people that are

more senior this might not be something that you've put like a lot of like thought and reflection and time into it might be something that you you know there are things that like when they come up you like or when they come up you obvious really don't like them so um it's not like that people don't have experience with the thought of this but I feel like maybe people haven't sat down and said like hey if I had to you know if I had to switch jobs like and I got to you know pick where I was going like what would I look for in a manager in a leader um so I thought this would be good to talk about um for context I am a principal software engineering manager at Microsoft I've been managing engineering teams for like 12 and a half years

essentially my entire professional career because I started as an IC and a manager uh a couple months into the job so been doing this for a little while um and uh yeah it's something that I'm really passionate about and I like to try and help people if you're new to my channel um you can ask questions in the comments I'm happy to try and answer them or you can look for Dev leader on social media that's also my main YouTube channel you can send me a message and I will keep it anonomous when I go to answer uh full context I've been watching the videos from earlier this week uh definitely hit my my limit for Burnout um you know weekend's coming up so looking forward to that but um it's it's hard right now um and thanks for folks that are expressing concern and

stuff it's it's not uh that I need a break from these videos uh this is enjoyable for me it's a break from everything else so um I know there's sort of a without making it sound like it's Doom like the the end is near I don't mean like the end of me I mean like the end of the things that are causing me to experience burnout there's a line of sight fortunately but it's hard um and it's going to get worse before it gets better unfortunately so um this kind of stuff I'm happy to do the challenging part is like I'm on call this week which is one more thing on top of everything else and because I'm on call I haven't been driving into the office I have not been able to go to the gym and then I wanted to be able to

go to the gym in the the evenings I'm actually going to sign up for another gymm so um that I can do bodybuilding in the evenings when I need to instead of just CrossFit in the morning but like I'm so burnt out I can't even carve the timeout after um but the side effect of that is like on a Monday I usually make four of these videos and I'm very lucky that I got like six videos five or six videos ahead to start the week and I'm just trying to to to catch up as we're going here so um apologies for that but uh let's uh let's kind of dive into this so I wanted to start with what a couple of other people were saying cuz might kind of Kickstart some things um someone was uh expecting around performance they expect managers to be

objective about performance right so they don't want to have surprises when it comes to performance reviews I think that's a really good one um if this isn't something that people have thought about it's potentially something that people have experienced where they get time for performance reviews and they're like okay like I I'm pretty confident I've been I'm ready for a promotion and then it doesn't happen and then they get some feedback and they're like oh like that's absolutely not what I was expecting I'm like I wish I would have known um kind of interesting um people were talking like the op was responding that saying that uh I think they might be a little bit more Junior um but they're saying I struggle with setting career goals past their current kind of like status like they they would want support with that which is good

I think a good engineering manager would um someone else saying I expect my my manager to be respectful to reports meaning you don't take others gossip opinions as gospel um yeah so maybe this kind of person's worked in maybe a bit more of a toxic work environment where there's gossip kind of things being said behind people's backs and then the manager doesn't have enough visibility on their own and they just kind of like accepted as reality so um yeah I think this is kind of an interesting start um I wanted to kind of start my side of this by saying the the traits that I try to embody and um kind of reflect on I would say like leaders that I found been successful and then situations where maybe not so much um just to kind of share different perspective so um it's going to

be kind of all over the place but if you're you know not new to these videos you know what's up if you're new usually do this exact same thing in a car when I'm driving to work so um I would say for me the things I try to embody um I want to make sure that I am building up uh as much trust and respect with my reports as possible um these are two things that you can't just demand they take a lot of work and so especially when I'm joining new teams I recognize that I have to start from zero with everyone I can't expect them to trust me and I can't expect them to respect me would be nice right but I don't have that expectation and that means that for me when I work starting on a new team or if I

have a new hire coming in like I said I'm starting from scratch and I treat it that way which means I need to make sure that they know I'm listening that if they have challenges that I'm there to support them that I actually care um I guess I I can't underscore the listening part enough because I want to make sure that when people uh and I don't just mean like literally you talk I listen but I mean like understanding because I need to be able to demonstrate to people that when their voice and concerns or they're talking about what gets them engaged or anything else that that's something that I can action and that's part in my opinion that's part about building the trust and respect is to make sure that um that I'm being accountable to them so I've said this in other videos

right my my view of an engineering manager role is that it's a support role and to me that means that uh like my my entire job is to make sure that my team can do their best work possible and that I can help them grow in their career and then I know other people will layer in they'll say well hey like that doesn't make sense like there's a business like and I get it like I worked at a startup for a long time I know it's about the business but my view on this is that if you Empower people to do their best work and you support them you just point them in the right direction the direction that the business is trying to go in and then you get the hell out of their way and then you support them as needed because if

they're empowered to do good work then they will so it's all about kind of getting that direction set up obviously I'm oversimplifying this but that's kind of my my Paradigm or the approach that I have for leading and um what else to add um I try to make sure that like I'm remaining technical because again when it comes to respect I don't ever want to find myself in a position where uh we're trying to discuss technical things and then the engineers start to be like I know this guy doesn't know like what am I wasting my time for I could tell this guy anything and he's going to believe it um you know I don't want people to fall into situations like that I don't think it's fair to them um but it doesn't mean that like I'm going to know every line of code

in the code base um you know I literally what I'm doing right now in my other YouTube channel and all my content creation is me trying to express my tech technical side um trying to help others but my main YouTube channel is like Building C tutorials for people right trying to help people learn how to program more effectively so something I try to make sure that I'm doing uh I do try to make sure that I'm helping people grow in their careers so that means like they were kind of saying in this Reddit thread I realize I'm pointing at my phone you can't see it um deal with it um I I need to make sure that people have clear expectations and so sometimes you know people will say like they they want to meet more regularly to talk about this kind of stuff other

people you know don't want to talk about it a lot so it's all situational which by the way is another sort of like leadership thing I've talked about this in other videos as well but situational leadership for everything because everyone is different and if you use a cookie cutter approach you might have okay good like okay to good results but like it's never going to be great and in some cases it will absolutely backfire so situational but um yeah making sure people have clear expectations and it can be challenging as a manager because when you have good employees that are doing awesome you still want to make sure that they understand their career progression it's not enough to just say like yes pat on the back keep going good work you still need to highlight areas where they should they can grow where they should

be trying to grow in Focus highlighting their strengths and weaknesses um it's all important so uh this you know early lesson from for me in my in my management career because I've been very fortunate to have really awesome Engineers um you know I've had Engineers that I used to manage that are you know they've exceeded me like they're at director level they've been at director level for for years kind of been stuck at the same level I I've never I haven't mentioned this uh in a while or maybe on this channel I've never I've never been promoted in my entire career I have a video on that which is kind of interesting so it's never happened technically um so you know I've LED people that have done they've moved on to be very successful and um I've been very lucky that way but early on

I learned that it's not even when you have really good Engineers you don't just say well I guess they're doing good like you know I guess I'll hands off like they don't need to talk about career stuff clearly they know what's going on but uh sometimes those people need um sort of I don't want to say the most support but they need they still need support right there's going to be cases in engineering manager where it's obvious when people have like technical challenges or other things and you want to help them along for sure but that's almost like it's easier the conversations might be hard because that's difficult to have conversations like that but identifying what to do and how to work on it is much more straightforward when people are really good and you're like okay how the hell am I going to try

to help this person get better um you still have to do it so uh what else I had something that was like crossing my mind as I was blabbing away there and I was like oh that would be really good to mention and then I forgot it so um maybe I'll probably think of some more things as I kind of go through um leaders that I thought have been really good um this is not something that I I don't know if I like consciously do this and maybe I could be better at at it but I I think I I think I lean into it but something that I found has worked amazing from leaders is like when I'm given autonomy so to answer this person's question like I expect autonomy from my manager and that means I do not want to be micromanaged it

is absolutely the thing that will kill all of my engagement motivation because I will kind of be like you should probably do it if you want to micromanage it you don't need me in fact it's literally a waste of everyone's time and money if you're going to micromanage me because if I just move out of the way you'll just do it so you don't need me um the reality is it's probably not a good thing that's happening and you probably need me for other reasons but anyway um being micromanaged and not having autonomy is probably the worst thing for me so I expect that from my manager um I need clear goals I need autonomy and then kind of let me loose um transparency is really important for me so especially like as a middle manager right if I have being a middle manager is

really hard I know some people don't want to believe it because you know you might be if you're an individual contributor and you've had crappy managers or you've seen managers like just kind of coasting you're like well that must be nice and I get it um but me being a middle manager is it's hard um you have stuff coming at you from both directions whether it's direct reports or or managers above you and uh your goal is basically to take from both sides and try to make both sides happy on top of everything else that you're doing so um I need to make sure that I have transparency from my manager because if I have to go communicate things to teams um there will be things that I don't agree with fully and I need to make sure that I I deeply understand why so

that I can try to get behind it um which is challenging uh I try to make sure so I need that transparency then I can do my job more effectively in communicating because if I'm like this feels weird I don't understand or it's kind of like it's going in different directions and then I have to communicate that to teams all of that trust and respect that I've been building up with them starts to erode because they'll just say like what's going on here right like they they'll see through it and then I'm the person who's kind of getting on for it which is not fair to me so I expect the transparency um clear expectations um support at my level something that's really important for me that I've been learning at Microsoft is visibility um I don't know at this point given feedback uh I

guess some could argue like that's on you to go chase the visibility but the challenge is that if I'm being tked with things that are supposed to be the visibility things and it's not resulting invisibility then like I don't I start to to not know like you know am I not being supported in the right way I want to use the word misled and I don't mean like um maliciously but I mean like with the right intentions but it's the wrong direction um so so I need like what I expect from my my manager my leadership is that um you know that I'm I'm put I'm tasked with the kind of like what I would do for my employees right like I want to make sure that they're growing in their career and focused on business goals like I need both of those things so

I want that for my manager to grow in my career I need visibility which means I need to work on high impact things but it's also again like I'm learning it's not just high impact it get be high impact but if it also doesn't associate with the right type of visibility which means across different parts of the organization then there's no visibility and then at that point you could have really big impact um but it's like not big enough because there's not enough visibility so uh that makes it quite challenging um I think there's some obvious things like I've said this in other videos too like if I ever had as an adult I'm 36 years old in April um if I ever had a manager yell at me or raise their voice at me in a meeting or something I would resign immediately I

won't I won't tolerate it so like I expect to be treated like an adult and like if you cannot manage to do that then you do not get to manage me I will go find another job no problem not concerned so I have that kind of expectation uh and when I say that I don't mean like people can't have heated conversations like I'm all for like if we want to have like a a good conversation and you know you're passionate about the argument you're making that's fine I don't mean raise your voice I mean like if you want to try and belittle me in front of people I will resign that's fine because I don't I would lose instantly lose all respect for the person and that's okay like I'm not going to put my career in their hands at that point uh but I

think that's kind of like I feel like that's setting the bar pretty low but I say that because I don't know for some people they I literally have DMS that I've navigated with people where they're telling me their their bosses belittling them and stuff and I say like that's not normal and I wouldn't tolerate it personally I can't tell people what to do but wouldn't tolerate it um so autonomy transparency I want to be supported um make sure that they're kind of when I say supported aimed in the right directions set up for high impact and high visibility at my level um I like honestly I feel like uh I'm pretty hands off generally so like you know and as a manager like I don't like to to push off one-on ones and stuff like that but I've had managers that will do it all

the time like I'm I'm grown up I understand the life of a manager I understand when things come up I get it um but at some point if I start feeling neglected that's different than like like I know you're busy it starts to be like okay you're busy but like now you're not in you're not in tune with me and you're not offering support so um so yeah and then I think I had also mentioned like not micromanaging but that comes with autonomy but I think it's a pretty short list um give me hard challenges you know uh let me go um and then with that said I think I wanted to touch on some like management style that like have not worked well I kind of touched on micromanagement that won't work for me um will completely be disengaged so I've had that situation

come up in my career and kind of like it's immediately I feel disengaged like when I say immediately I can't stress enough if I'm like I don't feel like I have any autonomy in the decisions I'm making then I'm like well my entire job is doing this right so then I go okay like I don't have autonomy in this I go back to like I'll focus on people because that's my responsibility is around the people and then I've been in situations too where there's so much micromanagement and so little say in my ability to to lead people on the team like I can't even set people up with the work streams that would help them grow in their career then what am I doing like I can't do my job right so uh then I have to go so I've certainly had that not enjoyable

um I've had I have had experiences where managers have try to I wouldn't go as far as saying belittling but they've tried to put me on the spot in meetings um so not quite like yelling at me or something like that but kind of uh it's almost made to make it seem like I'm an idiot and that's almost cross like that's border Line crossing a line not enough for me to uh to resign but enough that like your respect is gone so I've certainly had that before I have moved on from situations like that uh historically um because to me there's uh there is no in from my perspective other people can have different views I'm not putting any more time into that to like to repair that or try to build back up trust and respect because um I have in my career I've

never been in a situation where like oh I fumbled something so bad that like I could understand why you would lose trust and respect in me it's not happened so for to like to be treated like that I'm like no we'll not do that um what else I've been pretty fortunate I've had um I've had some leaders that are so I've shared perspective on this in the past I don't think that you need to be like to to be a manager for me I don't need you to be like the most technical person in the world I need you to understand the domain that we're working in and I need you to understand how to like support me in terms of managing people how to grow in my career but I don't need you to like be in the code right I don't I don't

need you to be that level of technical so when I say this I just wanted to add that as the the caveat but like I've had managers that are so not Technical and even in the domain like everything is so LAX that I'm like I don't like I don't know what you're doing here because they become so LAX about the the goals and stuff we have like the sort of the mission that we're on and it's like like like why why are you here to be honest um cuz usually what goes alongside that from my experience is like that's not not going to help support me in my growth right to be leading and managing me like I need you to also understand the direction or team and organization is trying to go so I've been in situations where I have managers that are kind

of like a little bit too LAX um I feel like I'm pretty good at being able to take technical Concepts and uplevel them or zoom in if I need to and get more technical but I've certainly had conversations with uh with managers where I'm like upleveling the information and I literally have watched them like holding in yawns and like eyes rolling back and glossing over and I'm like man like it's not that boring I just know that you actually don't understand anything I'm talking about right now and it's not that complicated um so it's I think they just get too disengaged there's too much distance from what's going on and for me that's like like I said uh had some they haven't been like the worst managers but like also like just not supportive so a difference between like they are a manager that's making

my life worse and they're just a manager that is certainly not progressing my career uh so or or enabling me further if that makes sense so those are kind of situations I would try to avoid but um yeah I hope that I wanted to talk through that I thought it was kind of interesting um be curious from folks in the comments if you have different thoughts like what are things that you really look for for um I feel like my list is is pretty short so and it might I think the other thing to call out is it might look very different for me as an engineering manager if you were not a manager I suspect most people that watch my channel are software Engineers of different levels usually I find it's more more Junior especially on my main Channel which is Dev leader that's

a lot more like beginner tutorials but this channel might be a little bit more of a mix so very curious if you would like to spend uh couple minutes or less like writing in the comments like some things that come to mind for managers that you uh you know have really admired or things that you were like hey that's like that's kind of a sign for me like not dealing with that I'd be very interested um different perspectives very helpful be helpful for me personally so you know I'd love to read through that and um yeah on top of that if you have questions if you have followup on this right maybe you have a situation that was uh challenging to work through you're going through one week your manager write it into me message Dev leader on social media you can look for Nick

centino on LinkedIn my profile is premium so should be open because people are people be sending me stuff um send it in I'll keep it Anonymous and I'm happy to chat through it so thanks so much for watching friendly reminder because people ask for it all of these are going up on Spotify at the time of recording this I'm like only 145 episodes behind uploading but you can find this on a Spotify podcast so if you want to keep that on in the background when you're doing your dishes it's awesome I appreciate it so thanks so much I will see you next time take care