I asked a friend who completed his first year as an engineering manager.
Here are the current issues he’d like to address for the future –
- How can he understand customers and stakeholders?
- How can he track every discussion thread?
- How can he exercise his technical abilities?
- How can he enhance his team?
The primary issue he faced was helping his team. With 8 people at the peak size, his challenge was if everyone required 1 hour of hand holding daily then his entire day was gone.
I asked about the Jedi Knight system where more experienced engineers were paired with junior engineers to reduce the load. This didn’t work in practice because someone always took the backseat unless they were both excited to work on the project. I thought this was pair programming with mentorship built in.
What he found more useful was to unify people under a common goal.
He will need to develop his engineers into more senior members capable of handling entire projects by themselves. I will discuss more as I learn how he approaches coaching his engineers.
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