Making the Switch to Engineering Management

Making the Switch to Engineering Management by Justin Carmony

The first part of an engineer's career is pretty straight-forward: learning the skills and technology to code. Then, one day after being a senior developer for a few years, you find you need to make a decision: do you want to become a manager? Are you ready to make the switch to management? Do you even want to? What would it be like? How do you know if you're ready? How do you prepare? Ahhhhh!

Take a deep breath: it's okay. It is possible to make a switch to engineering management and still have a fulfilling job. We'll discuss the basics of being an engineering manager, what it's like to make the switch, and how to prepare for it. We'll discuss techniques you can use to be successful, as well as common pitfalls you can run into. So whether you're an engineer looking to prepare for the possibility in the future, or a seasoned manager looking for some ways to improve (since we all can improve), come learn from Justin's experience helping mentor engineers for leadership and management roles.

Speaker Bio

Justin Carmony has been programming professionally in PHP since 2005. He lives in Layton, Utah where he currently is the Sr. Director of Engineering for Deseret Digital Media, a local media company that runs some of largest regional new websites in the country. He is currently focused on big data, data science, and mentoring engineers. He is a long-time member of the Utah PHP Usergroup and Utah Open Source community.

Transcript

1. Making the Switch to
   Engineering Management
   Justin Carmony - Utah PHP Usergroup - June 2018
   

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2. Goal: Give You Things to Think About
   & Possible Next Steps
   

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3. Y.M.M.V!
   (Your Mileage May Vary)
   Based on my personal experiences
   

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4. More Conversation, Less Presentation
   

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5. Who am I?
   Sr. Director of Engineering, Deseret Digital Media
   - Analytics
   - Advertising Platforms
   - KSL.com News
   - Publishing Technologies
   Member of the Utah Open Source Community
   Been breaking & making web stuff for 15+ years
   

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6. Poll
   Engineers? Team Leads? Managers? Manager of Managers?
   

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7. Story
   

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8. What is a manager?
   

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9. Two Primary Types
   Individual Contributor
   ●
   Success is measured by the results
   of your individual contributors
   ●
   Primary focus is still technical /
   code
   Manager
   ●
   Success is measured by the results
   of your team
   ●
   Primary focus are people /
   outcomes
   

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10. Aspects of Being a Manager*
    * - in no particular order
    

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11. Aspect: A Mental Shift
    

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12. Senior Engineer to Junior Manager
    

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13. You’re Going To Make Mistakes
    

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14. Thinking People First,
    Not Code
    

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15. Example: “We’re having stability problems”
    

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16. Individual Contributor
    Manager
    

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17. If you’re “doing well” but your team isn’t
    YOU ARE FAILING!
    

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18. Mental Shift:
    Your are responsible for 100% of the code,
    which you will write 5% of.
    

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19. Aspect: Mentoring
    (aka growth)
    

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20. You Cannot Scale
    You must grow people to do more!
    

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21. Taking time, on a regular basis, to think about
    someone’s growth versus logistics
    

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22. Carmony Mentoring Style
    ●
    Kick off one-on-one, discuss goals, career aspirations, etc
    ●
    Meet every 4-6 weeks for 1 hour
    ●
    Discuss a topic
    ●
    Create items to work on
    ●
    Follow up on the items next meeting
    ●
    Rinse & Repeat
    

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24. Spencer’s Story
    

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25. Aspect: 1-on-1s
    (aka Logistics)
    

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26. 1-on-1’s
    ●
    Two things I cover:
    ○
    Logistics
    ○
    Moral / How People Are Doing
    ●
    Logistics
    ○
    “Where are we at on this project?”
    ○
    “How are you feeling about it?”
    ○
    “Any impediments”
    ○
    Note: not a full blown status report, just checking in
    ●
    Moral
    ○
    “How are you feeling?”
    ○
    “Anything I can do to help you out?”
    

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27. Adapt your 1-on-1 style to each direct report
    

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28. Aspect: Course Corrections
    

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30. Aspect: Stakeholders
    

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31. Managing Expectations
    

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32. Being a Shield
    (aka going to meetings)
    

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34. You get disrupted so your team doesn’t!
    

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35. Become your Stakeholder’s best avenue
    to solve problems
    

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36. Communicate, Communicate, Communicate
    

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37. Aspect: Be a Defender!
    

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38. Not so
    “Secret Weapon”:
    The Manager’s Path
    

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39. Resources
    

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40. Additional Resources
    ●
    Camille Fournier’s Blog - http://www.elidedbranches.com/
    ●
    Lara Hogan’s Blog - https://larahogan.me/blog/
    ●
    Michael Loop’s Blog - http://randsinrepose.com/
    

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41. Questions?
    

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