Building elite Tech teams | Founder of Ventellect | Host of Ventellect's Building our world Podcast 🎙
Can an Engineering Manager who is 50% hands-on properly manage a team of Software Engineers as well? A conversation I had with an Engineering Lead I was pitching a position to, but he was not interested. He said with that much hands-on stuff in the role they would not be able to manage effectively. And not enough hours in the day. Even if the team of Engineers is quite Senior. But with most Engineering Leadership roles requiring a lot of hands-on work - surely this is not the case? And companies seem to think it is very doable based on the requirements for pretty much every Engineering Lead vacancy out there right now. #Ventellect #SoftwareEngineering #TechRecruitment
I think is very general and assumption-based to say only: hands-on. I would focus on: - what they perceive as hands-on? Maybe the company's hands-on perspective and the persons' are not the same - In a lead role, people usually would expect to move away from day-to-day operational tasks, and move into business objectives, engineering decision-making and people mng. - The company should have a clear vision on what they perceive as impact of this role: If they expect the engineering lead to make impact in team structure, org design, then, why would we limit their time to do this by involving them in "on-hands" activities? A lot of variables here, but I think it comes down to clarification: from both business and candidate side. At the end of the day, if the professional is looking to move away from "on-hands"well defined activities, then it's clear as air that maybe the expectations from both sides are missaligned
Ania Pietras
7mo
Team(s) size matters. I'm hands on manager for 7 ICs totals (2 teams), I technically contribute to only one of them. But if that would be double number of ICs, or e.g. ICs on 4 different teams under me, each team with their own challenge, there there would be much less time for technical contribution/coding.
Rakesh Chandru
7mo
In my experience 50% hands-on all the time is near impossible. I get time some days where I would use it for some coding. At most an EM would spend 20-30% hands-on, if they have passion towards it. Many EMs even spend their 100% towards people, processes and stakeholder management.
Vadim Fedorov
7mo
Wanted to share my thoughts in a comment here but it was enough for a full post. In short, 50/50 never works in my experience, and companies should be conscious to make one type of work a priority and another one secondary.
Damijan Ćavar
7mo
The job title has a manager in it. They should just hire a lead/staff engineer instead.
Evgeniy Vovney
7mo
It's simple) An Engineering Manager who has 50% hands-on activity - is not an Engineering 'Manager'. That's all.
Engineering leadership at ZEOS, Zalando’s B2B Brand.
7moIt depends on your definition of "manage effectively". a) Being able to identify growth vectors, creating opportunities to safely practicing that growth, holding accountable on grow process requires time. b) You have to manage and hold accountable for the actual delivery, quality, and operations, and that takes time. c) And then you also have to be an IC 50% of available time. Your story sounds like the leader said they cannot do a) and b) while doing c). The company might understand "manage the team" while being hands-on as doing b) and c) only. While that works time-wise, most leaders would have to give up a). Giving up a) for c) feels like a tradeoff between immediate results and sustainability. Your leader is less of a multiplier for the team and is not accomplishing things through delegation, and you will see less engaged employees and more attrition. You gain half a headcount worth of deliverables of a senior IC.