[Third Edition] Under the weather
Today is a bit of a sick day - likely allergy-related as spring start to be sprung here in Central Indiana. I went for a run yesterday and came back to a runny nose and tight sinuses and mad tiredness.
That said, progress continues on the book - and I've sent out my first proposal for manager coaching. I'll likely work on a proper landing page and the like for that work in the next few weeks.
For the book, the first chapter is in with my editor (aka. my wife), but I figured I'd share some of that with you today as I work through this brain fog/runny nose.
Enjoy!
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I have had the fortune of directly managing engineers off and on for nearly twenty years now. I’ve made a ton of mistakes, but I’ve also learned a lot and uncovered superpowers and skills that make engineers and engineering teams healthier and, almost by happenstance, more productive.
And this book is written at least a bit for the me of 2006 and for anyone in that situation today - the newly minted engineering manager who is likely in this position because they were really good at making connections and filling in blanks. Maybe they wanted to be in more meetings.
And now they’ve been promoted into an entirely new job and asked to managed people.
And people are hard.
You end up being part therapist, project manager, press agent, marketer and note taker.
On top of any technical contributions you’re still expected to produce.
It’s a lot to juggle for a first time, and done poorly, new engineering managers can burn out not just themselves, but their teams as well.
It can be entirely too overwhelming until you get used to it - if you ever get used to it.
This toolkit is intended to give you tools, techniques and thought technologies that can help make the job a bit easier, or at least a bit more straightforward.
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On a related note: I had a past colleague of mine reach out with more suggested chapters/topics for the book. Most topics lean more toward working with product teams, managing processes and estimates and the like.
I do think there is a deep well of material there. In fact, I spent some time at a roundtable of other engineering and product leaders just last week that circled around those topics precisely.
But for this book, I'm intending to concentrate on the people management part of the job of being a software engineering manager.
That said: What do you struggle more with?
People, product or process?
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Coming up on the blog this week will be a bit about why you always need to budget for late-arriving feedback - especially when not every stakeholder has been involved all along.
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Finally, happy Monday!
And, if it's not a happy Monday - like maybe you're battling a runny nose and tight sinuses and mad tiredness - I can recommend downing a few spoonfuls of tasty peanut-butter-powered snack mix from B. Happy - a Central Indiana purveyor of such things.
It's been a dangerous addition to my house over the last week and I can highly recommend this addictive stuff.
Take care of each other out there, and remember not everything needs to be done in a hurry.
There's always time enough, and you're enough, too.