How to keep solid engineering skills as an Engineering Manager [update]

Slide 1

Slide 1 text

Oren Ellenbogen How to keep solid engineering skills as an Engineering Manager?

Slide 2

Slide 2 text

My name is Oren Ellenbogen 👋 aka Ear Elbow Like you, I’m an Engineering Manager

Slide 3

Slide 3 text

You’re exhausted (FOMO is real) … and looking for an answer This talk is applicable to all levels of Engineering Management

Slide 4

Slide 4 text

Where should we start? With the devil we know

Slide 5

Slide 5 text

While (?) { Write code }

Slide 6

Slide 6 text

While (?) { Write code } “Invest X% of your time writing code”

Slide 7

Slide 7 text

While (?) { Write code } Wrong assumption: All features are of equal value to you

Slide 8

Slide 8 text

While (?) { Write code } Only write code that produces meaningful insights Investments: Expertise, Tools, Dependencies, etc. Never in the critical path.

Slide 9

Slide 9 text

While (?) { Write code } Only write code that produces meaningful insights Investments: Expertise, Tools, Dependencies, etc. Never in the critical path.

Slide 10

Slide 10 text

While (?) { Complete IC tasks } Only complete IC tasks that produces meaningful insights Also: OnCall, Observability, Docs, etc.

Slide 11

Slide 11 text

Trigger: “I don’t have enough time to learn by writing code” What now?

Slide 12

Slide 12 text

Invest your time elsewhere 80% in How X works (+Why) 20% in How to do X

Slide 13

Slide 13 text

Look at your team’s stack, e.g. - Nodejs - Vue - Elastic Search - MySQL - Kafka - GraphQL - … - [CI, CD, Monitoring, Alerts, etc.]

Slide 14

Slide 14 text

How to do X < How X works (and why was it invented) Seek to understand how things work Invest in fundamentals

Slide 15

Slide 15 text

How X works (+why is it needed) e.g. - How event-loop works? What not to do with it? - What append-only data structures good for? - Why Virtual DOM was invented? - How ACID works? When is it good? When to avoid?

Slide 16

Slide 16 text

Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/blmoregon/28674598606 Be an archaeologist Tell a story

Slide 17

Slide 17 text

template

Slide 18

Slide 18 text

“Sure! But when?”

Slide 19

Slide 19 text

😱

Slide 20

Slide 20 text

You’re always Free in 2 weeks

Slide 21

Slide 21 text

Future Thinking Explicit investments

Slide 22

Slide 22 text

Invest your time to ﬁght inertia 70% in the present 30% in the future

Slide 23

Slide 23 text

Present 1. Design requirements, trade-offs, risks, know-how 2. Operate sustainability, quality of service, focus Future 3. Hire puzzle, pitch & close 4. Envision alignment (tech/biz), roadmap, growth

Slide 24

Slide 24 text

70% in the present: Practice in areas you’ll gain insights and feel pains → Level up your Design & Operate

Slide 25

Slide 25 text

70% in the present: Level up Design & Operate - Execute insightful IC tasks ✅ - Take Design Reviews by other teams and do your own - Analyze operational burden (e.g. tickets, alerts, etc.)

Slide 26

Slide 26 text

30% in the future: Research what knowledge your team is lacking → Level up Envision & Hire

Slide 27

Slide 27 text

30% in the future: Level up Envision & Hire - Research the competition - Analyze & present missing expertise in the team - Write a doc: “Why should you join us? Why now?”

Slide 28

Slide 28 text

Seek deeper knowledge & inspiration by building your library, e.g. → 30% in the future

Slide 29

Slide 29 text

No content

Slide 30

Slide 30 text

70% in the present 30% in the future Hours will ﬂuctuate, keep the ratios consistent over time

Slide 31

Slide 31 text

“How do I know that it’s good enough”?

Slide 32

Slide 32 text

To continuously improve you need to be consistently calm & optimistic * 90% of the time, we’re human

Slide 33

Slide 33 text

The EM’s technical skills time The team’s technical skills Common result Desired result

Slide 34

Slide 34 text

“I have good ENOUGH engineering skills to:” ❏ Entice experienced engineers to join my team to raise the bar

Slide 35

Slide 35 text

“I have good ENOUGH engineering skills to:” ❏ Entice experienced engineers to join my team to raise the bar ❏ Notice bottlenecks in my team’s Products/Systems (tech or socio-tech)

Slide 36

Slide 36 text

Slide 37

Slide 37 text

Slide 38

Slide 38 text

“I have good ENOUGH engineering skills to:” ❏ Entice experienced engineers to join my team to raise the bar ❏ Notice bottlenecks in my team’s Products/Systems (tech or socio-tech) ❏ Offer alternatives to product requirements & technical design decisions ❏ Unblock Technical Roadmap creation for my team’s systems ❏ Grow, challenge and inspire my teammates to retain them

Slide 39

Slide 39 text

Slide 40

Slide 40 text

Slide 41

Slide 41 text

Execute insightful IC Tasks I’m good enough to improve present future

Slide 42

Slide 42 text

Got anything to share? I’m all ears oren.ellenbogen@gmail.com or oren@forter.com We’re hiring, come say hello 👋

Slide 43

Slide 43 text

Design Great talks & posts: - Replicated Data Consistency Explained Through Baseball - Silence is Golden: Coordination-Avoiding Systems Design - The Log: What every software engineer should know about real-time data's unifying abstraction - Dan North - Decisions, Decisions - How to Outperform a 10x Developer - Turning the database inside out

Slide 44

Slide 44 text

Operate Great talks & posts: - How to Write Documentation for People that Don't Read - Practicalities of Productionizing Distributed Systems - How NOT to Measure Latency - Stability Patterns & Antipatterns

Slide 45

Slide 45 text

Hire Great talks, posts & websites: - There is no talent shortage - The Accidental Diminisher - https://staffeng.com

Slide 46

Slide 46 text

Envision Great talks, posts and websites: - How to Move Beyond Gamiﬁcation - https://boringtechnology.club/ - https://www.useronboard.com/

Slide 47

Slide 47 text

Share fears, tactics, resources, failures, and success stories with other humans Get out of your head