The trinity of successful engineering teams
As I'm currently interviewing at a lot of places for the role of Engineering Manager I am seeing a lot of organizations. What strikes me here is the range of different interpretations of the role - from hands-on & deeply technical over pure people manager to strategic partner. And while all of these facets are needed everywhere it's quite different how each "dial" is turned up in any given organization.
Why is the role so open for interpretation?
- The role itself is relatively new in software development, hence there's not yet one commonly shared definition.
- The maturity and culture of an organisation is shaping the role quite heavily.
Division of labor: Focusing the Engineering Manager role
In my exploration I realized that the definition N26 shared when introducing the role is very much confirming how I see my ideal impact in an organization:
PEOPLE - Facilitate & guide every team member's personal & professional growth & care for their wellbeing
PROCESS - Align the team around clear goals & unblock the delivery of value
CULTURE - Create a positive working atmosphere aligned through shared values allowing everyone to bring their "whole self" and participate equally
With the right people, culture, and values, you can accomplish great things.
You'll notice that this interpretation doesn't include TECH as main focus - that's because there's already a whole team of engineers that focus on software development and in this model these engineers are aligned by a thoughtful and knowledgeable tech lead. A successful Engineering Manager will still keep up to date with current technology and what decisions their team are taking, at the very least to be able to inform stakeholders and be aware of potential risks. However, they won't need to get involved with it or even be the final decider. This gives their team authority and establishes trust in everyone's strengths.
The dream team
Putting it all together you'll end up with a trinity of Tech Lead, Product Owner and Engineering Manager as seen in the picture above, each of them contributing their part to the success of the team and its goals. To me this specialization is a great evolution of Engineering teams which will lead to better products and happier team members.
What do you think?
I'm curious: Do you agree with my line of thinking? Do you feel there's merit in splitting responsibilities up in the proposed way? What did you see working well and what failed you? Let's have a conversation below!
PS: Thanks to Sarah (N26) and Natalia & Franzi (The Guardian) for helping me shape my understanding of the role with their interviews.
PPS: Quote by Tricia Griffith via brainyquote
Thanks for the article. One aspect that’s interesting for me as an EM is team size. If the team is small, I think it makes sense to have a “Tech Lead” role that combines technical contributions with management duties. This role affords technical people the opportunity to start learning management and understand if they would like to continue on this career path. An EM role as described in the article (people, process, culture) makes sense to me for larger teams (perhaps large enough to split the team into two with one EM for both teams). At this point, both technical and management roles are complex enough for two positions
Stefan Hoth seems like this link is dead. Returns 404 "N26 shared when introducing the role"
I agree with you! Your article raised some questions I was asking myself for some time. We do have a misalignment on a technical aspect of this role. Maybe because this is a young role in IT (unfortunately) as you mentioned. The fact is that almost all EMs are actually ex-engineers. Saying that many tend to lean toward their comfort zone and stay close to coding, be involved in architecturing, code reviews... I saw so many EMs who are actually Technical Leads with a small investment on a 'people aspects' of the role. IMHO this bends the role of EM in a wrong direction and drives a trend of promoting the best engineers (with not the best people skills). Reading your text and being in a market for some time I might ask the whole industry a few questions: 1. After a few years in this role, will EM be able to keep up with tech and be a good contributor? 2. If not, does that mean EM is an expandable role whose value expires together with a losing track on technology? 3. Does that mean we will value more new EMs (transitioned from engineering positions) over experienced ones because they have better technical knowledge and neglect other aspects of the role? 4. If EM contribute to the code and decide about directs bonus&salary, will the team members be free to challenge EM's code? Isn't that conflict of interests?