Coding as an Engineering Manager

[gergelyke]

[pnevares]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts in this article! You mentioned being between the tech lead engineering manager and the people engineering manager. Is that based on the needs of the team(s) you have been on, or your personal preference?

With the teams I have been on (not led), it feels like engineering managers end up filling in the gaps to minimize risk and address the needs of the team on a quarterly or yearly basis. This leads to wide swings between product, people, and tech depending on where the people and the product are at that moment. Have you seen the same?

[gergelyke]

It was the needs of the teams I've been on. For example in my current position at Uber I tend to do a bit more on the coding side as we are a very small team for now. This also means that I spend a lot of my time on hiring. As the team grows I am sure I'll do a lot less coding and a lot less sourcing / interviewing.

So to answer your question: yeah, I think your observation is very similar to what I've seen in the past years.

[ciustuc]

It was great to read your post on engineering management. I've pulled it into BingeWith to let folks listen to the audio: http://bingewith.com/#id1179. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

[coderofsalvation]

Cool read. The world needs more engineering managers like Gergely.

[philou]

Thanks for your post. I have been in the same situation, and I too learned that we must stop committing to task critical tasks if we don't want to block the team. One trick I have had success with is trying to build a self-organizing team in order to delegate as much as possible to the team. This leaves more time for the manager to work on technical work. Full story here http://philippe.bourgau.net/how-to-keep-programming-when-assigned-a-management-job/.