How To Get Started As A Software Engineering Manager

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Hey folks, I am going to email today. I had a really awesome one come in with a whole bunch of topics around uh engineering management. So, I'm going to have to make multiple videos on this because there's a lot to go through here. And I figured I'll start with one of the first parts. It's kind of like an intro to engineering management, some of the the topics to think through. So, huge thanks to the person that sent this in. They reached out over email, then they messaged me on Instagram. So, friendly reminder, this channel is driven by your questions. So, if you have questions, leave them below in the comments or do as this person did, find a way to contact me on social media. It's just dev leader on every single platform. Um, you can find me as Nick Cosantino on LinkedIn as well, so you can send me a message there.

But really appreciate this kind of stuff because I think if you have questions like this, other people will too. So, this one is starting off by saying, I'd like to hear your recommendations for someone starting as a software engineering manager. I recently started working as a manager in a startup. I have 13 years of experience in software engineering. U have worked in startups and big corporations, but it's the first time I'm the manager. I'm trying to apply good things I learned from my previous managers. So, I think that's a really good approach. Kind of model those behaviors you really liked and do things I wish my managers did in the past. So, again, sometimes people will fall into this trap of like, I've seen my managers do this and like that's like must just be the way it's done. But um having some awareness of like I wish my managers did this like you can become that opportunity for the next group of people that are getting managed.

So I think that's a really good thing to think through. However, it feels as uh as I don't have enough time to do everything. Yeah. Uh and I'm covering multiple roles also. Yeah. Um I'm delegating and except the fact that I rarely have time to do anything technical stuff. uh any technical stuff and I mostly review work, give approvals, try to unblock the team, make the folks more efficient but still feel like communication with my team is not the best. Okay, my team is two UX designers, three front end developers, one QA and one back end. Okay, so you got a mix of roles and stuff within a team. This is uh pretty common I would say to have especially like at a startup I think they're at. Yeah, I think this kind of thing is pretty typical. Um, the ratios could be different, whatever, but I think to have like a mix of kind of rules like that seems pretty normal.

Um, how often do you recommend to have one-on- ones? Are there any specific activities or meetings to improve team collaboration? Tried coffee breakers, um, retrospectives, but half the team ignores them. I wouldn't want to be, uh, all day having meetings either. So, what do you recommend? Uh, there there's a question about performance measurement. We'll do this one in a whole other video. Um, so the first parts of this are really just like new to a team. What do I do? By the way, I'm checking a timer because I have food I have to take out. I got 10 minutes to wrap this up for an intro. So, um, how often do you recommend having one-on- ones? Every week, I would say. Um, do that to start. I've worked with teams where, um, over time people like especially some of like the the more autonomous like higher level engineers are like, I don't need that every week.

or if you're finding your collaboration is really amped up. So, I've worked on teams where like we were we were in the office together working side by side to do a one-on-one every week would be fine to check in, but it wasn't really like we we just talked so much anyway that it might not have been mandatory. So, something to consider, but I would start with, you know, every week and then evolve that over time with your your people individually. Um this like the one of the questions was any specific activities to improve team collaboration. Um I want to go back to some of the beginning of this though like this in a startup especially it's going to feel like you're wearing every single possible hat that can exist in an organization. Just expect that. Um I think that's totally normal especially as an engineering manager.

I would say depending on the startup sometimes even the software engineers kind of feel like that right. Um there's people who work in startups and small teams where it feels like the manager is not really present. Maybe there isn't even one. Maybe the product team is not really there. There's not really project managers or you don't have the luxury of UX designers and QA as separate roles. So sometimes even the engineers are like I got to do everything. And I would just say in startups like expect that. But as an engineering manager even more so. And I'm not saying that because I'm trying to put like an engineering manager role like on a pedestal and saying like yes, you have to do everything. I'm just saying that like in my opinion as a good software engineering manager, I like leaning into like servant leadership. I like trying to make sure that I'm a support role helping unblock people as this person described.

Um, and that means like you are constantly trying to, you know, do other things to help unblock people get ahead of the curve. So like from my own experience from eight years working at a startup doing this kind of thing and being in as someone who was writing code at the same time uh every single possible hat it's going to be absolutely chaotic and I think that the more that you grow into that role and the more that the company grows and evolves the more structure comes into play. So, um I'm saying this because uh for this individual or for other people, if you're like uh startups seem overwhelming or even being an engineering manager seems overwhelming, I would say you're going to have those things like multiplied together as a engineering manager in a startup. And if you don't like that and you want more structure, it might not be a good fit.

So again, not trying to deter anyone. I'm just trying to say if you thrive in some chaos and like doing lots of different things could be an awesome opportunity. If not, maybe steer away and look for something with a little bit more structure. Um, but yeah, like reviewing work, giving approvals, trying to unblock the team. That's essentially what I was trying to do. When this person is saying not enough time in the day to do it all, this is why in my previous videos when you hear me talk about working in a startup, I said like I worked basically non-stop. The only other things I did in my life were I would go to the gym and sleep. And I had to at some point in my career at the startup, I had to this this wasn't the only solution, but I ended up getting myself a dog.

Her name's Laya. I still have her. And she was one of the things that forced me to take time away from the office. Have to go home, have to walk her, have to feed her, have to be present for her. So that was like a forcing function that I put into my life. Otherwise, I was just working non-stop. there is lots to do and there's always too much to do. Um like I said more structure will come into play over time. Um are there any extra activities and meetings to improve team collaboration? This is tricky right? So this is something that I would say is kind of around team culture and when you hear me talk about culture and in any video that I talk about it I always remind people culture is not a thing that you dictate, right? You can't you can't do a thing that forces culture.

you don't say you don't get to say culture is X therefore that's what it is culture is like the observed um observed reality of like what your team is doing so you can do things to try and influence culture but I don't think that you get to dictate it so in terms of team collaboration things to improve it um I think that again because you don't get to dictate it uh I would think about how work is structured as a starting point so I don't know like you what flavor of agile if at all this this uh manager is doing at their company. Uh but I would encourage people to when they're doing work like working on features or working on bugs, start collaborating from the beginning, right? You're picking up something from the backlog or from the sprint board, cool. Read through it and if you're a developer, read through it and then go ask one of the UX designers, go ask the QA, go ask one of the other developers.

Start your work off by working with someone else to say, "Here's what I'm thinking of doing. What do you think about this?" Right? Build it into sort of your software development life cycle. Try to move away from things like a developer grabs something, works on it in a silo, says, "I'm done." And when they think they're done, then that's time for QA. Then that's time for UX people to review. Then that's time for other developers to see or hear about code for the first time. Try to structure your software development life cycle to have collaboration built in. I think that helps tremendously. Um there are going to be people in every company that are different in terms of how much they want to interact with others, right? Um when I worked at a startup um especially in the early days, it's kind of like the cliche thing where it's like it felt like we were a family.

Like we would work all the time together. on Friday nights, a bunch of us would go out and we would go like, you know, go downtown and go out to bars and stuff like we would just hang out together. Um, there were times like one of the guys that was the first engineer there, like we're still like really really close friends. I live across the country from him and sorry, across the continent in different countries. We're still very close friends. So, some people just will not be like that. That's totally okay. So I I would recommend not trying to force anything, but there are different ways that you can try to get people encouraged to collaborate. Like I said, the building it into the software development life cycle in my opinion is a good way to do it. And then I think creating opportunities, but not forcing people into it, if that makes sense.

So um when I see like tried coffee breakers, um that's the kind of thing where I'm like, hey, if you make that available and people aren't taking you up on it, kind of interesting. I wouldn't force people to do it though because then that gets into this other person's point around wouldn't want to be all day having meetings, right? Some people are like, I just want to get focused on and get it done. So, you know, I don't really I don't see the value in like hanging out for coffee kind of thing and chatting. Um, it's even trickier if you're remote and I don't know from this person. They might have said somewhere, but I don't know if they're remote. That makes it a little bit trickier. Um, I've seen things like with remote teams that I thought were pretty cool where and this came as a suggestion from team members, which was periodically on Fridays we would get like on a call together and then we would do like collaborative team games.

Like there's a bunch of different websites where you can do stuff like that. There was one that was kind of one of my favorites and I don't like to be totally transparent. I don't really like playing games and stuff like that. Um if I feel awkward um especially if they're competitive. I don't like they just I'm not competitive at all. But this one was so much fun. You would it was basically like broken telephone but with drawings. So you had to I can't remember exactly how it works. I'm going to butcher it. But everyone would get a canvas to draw on and then the next person would have to say what they think it is and then it keeps rotating through and everyone has to keep like drawing their own version of it. And then at the end you get to see the broken telephone effect.

So much fun. But one of the things that I think worked really well about that was not just because the game was cool, but it was because someone on the team had come up with the idea. So I would recommend trying to survey with the team to get a feel for collaboration. I'm just checking the timer. See my my food is got two minutes. Um see if people on the team have ideas about what they like perceive as like the level of collaboration. Maybe your perception is different from what they feel. And if other people are kind of feeling that, maybe lean into what the team thinks in terms of ideas to improve that. I'm a huge fan of getting team buy in to go do things, generating ideas from the team instead of you being the person that has to go figure it out. Um, again, thinking about how this person was calling out, you know, unblocking the team, making the team feel more efficient, like lean into that.

you don't solve the problem for them. Kind of raise awareness for it. Let's let let them come up with ideas and then support their ideas. So, I think that's a really helpful way to try and get people to collaborate without it feeling forced because they'll come up with the ideas. Um, retrospectives, I I'm a huge fan of these, but I think that they have to have actionable outcomes. So, I would recommend a retrospective. you build if you're if you're interested in it, build it into your software development life cycle. There's no there's no option, it's there, you do it, people participate, that's that someone's knocking at my door on a Sunday. No. Um, so build that in and then I would make sure that in a retro you create a safe place for people to talk about anything, right?

Um they can be heated conversations but the point is the end of that retrospective there must be actions that's it and at least one action and you could start with at most one action every single retrospective you are going to focus on improving that for the next time. That way people see that there is value because if you just have a a rant session and then there's no action that's taken after that people are like why the hell did we do this? It's a waste of time, right? Nothing happens. So, those are some thoughts. I got a lot more to follow up from this email. I got to stop my dogs from barking and get the food out of the oven. So, take care. I'll see you next time.