Know the Three Management Roles
Rands explains it well: most companies have three management roles — a lead focused on tactics, a director focused on strategy, and the bridge between them (the lead of leads). Understanding these hats is critical to becoming an effective engineering manager.
Even solo entrepreneurs of growing tech companies can be evaluated like primordial big bang singularities with these three roles running around inside them. Managers who are keenly aware of these roles can move in and out of them ever so carefully to smooth things out when there are gaps in the organization.
Is there a temporary gap in executive leadership? Know to dial up strategy and look for ways to lead this informally. Is there a gap in communication between strategy and tactics? Know which role to temporarily assume or which people to talk to and help grow — i.e., "manage" upwards, sideways, and downwards.
For engineers: To be a great engineer it helps to work backwards from what a manager is focused on. And to be a great manager it helps to work backwards from what directors and managers of managers are doing. Know the structure so that friction in strategic or tactical areas doesn't slow you down.
Second-order tip: This applies beyond engineering organizations. You can practice the strategy and tactics duality within your own life or career. It's only within a larger organization that differentiation of the roles across multiple people happens.
Unblock Until They're Inspired
This tip is about honesty, empathy, psychological safety, the ladder of inference, and listening: while you have the energy, explore until you're very confident each team member feels happy and inspired. Unblock until they're in that state. And then step back and let project, product, and people growth happen.
Attitude, Empathy & Enthusiasm
Julie Zhou, in her book The Making of a Manager, highlights the importance of a manager's function in aligning vision and inspiring their team. To nurture a successful team, I believe in three somewhat unconventional principles:
1. Maintain a Positive Attitude
A good mood is crucial for proactive leadership. How you feel affects how you interact with others and your ability to effectively manage. Happy people inspire happiness in others — hence it is vital to find personal happiness and resilience to succeed as a leader.
2. Practice Empathy
Empathizing with team members allows managers to understand their struggles. This empathy can help create an environment in which everyone feels enthusiastic about tasks and duties handed over to them. Managers should always assume positive intent because most people deal with issues beyond their immediate working environment.
3. Foster Enthusiasm About Conquering Technical Obstacles
Cultivating excitement in the team is crucial for innovation. Managers should focus on aligning team members' interests with the goal of the team and always look for ways to spark their excitement.
Takeaway: Effective management begins by maintaining a happy and resilient attitude, practicing empathy with team members, and sparking excitement to drive innovation. From there, mechanisms for feedback and scaling impact (including auditing these mechanisms), as well as critical conversations all become crucial — but that's for another time.
Write Mini Docs for Everything
Write a mini doc (or as needed a more formal doc) for:
- Ahead of all meetings (including 1:1's)
- Projects
- New ideas
- New problems
This allows you to spend your time brainstorming ahead of time and to ask good questions or provide guidance during the meeting.
Practical tip: For important meetings, set a reminder (e.g., use the Due app) 15 minutes before to ensure the mini doc is written. Ideally write them in a place where you can share the doc as needed.
Coach Early, Coach Often
Feedback is a gift. Be kind (not necessarily nice). Over-communicate. And find your way to insist on the highest standards — e.g., kaizen.
Speak Crisply
To communicate clearly, speak crisply. Breathe until your fight-or-flight emotions fade away. Breathe until you have something useful to say. And when you speak:
- Remove the upswing at the end — statements should sound like statements, not questions.
- Lower the tone of your voice — a deeper register conveys confidence and calm.
- Remove self-analysis and hesitancy — there's just not time to worry about how you sound when you're speaking.
The tip about leading with open-ended questions is great too.
Resources: These ideas come from this talk on speaking with authority. Also consider root-causing and conditioning yourself with the exercises mentioned in this video on vocal presence.
The Five Performance Buckets
"Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out."
— John Wooden
There are five levels you can group your reports under:
Bucket #1 — Close to Promotion
Performing at the next level and at their current level. You have to be very sure they are performing consistently at both levels. They must have long-term potential — in part they can show this by temporarily operating at two different levels — and be trending upwards consistently. If they are, it is your responsibility to get them promoted.
Bucket #2 — Trending Back from Promotion
The employee is trending from close to promotion back to performing at their current level. This can be very hard for an employee to hear, but you have to give feedback if this is the case. You need to be specific and concrete about why — include at least two anecdotes and ideally some measurable data. Set up a plan for how to close the gaps to get back to Bucket #1. Great managers do this proactively.
Bucket #3 — Performing at Level
You have to tell them why they are not yet performing at the next level and what they can do better to get to Bucket #1. Specific examples are essential for constructive feedback. Charting the path to get to #1 is one of your most important — and hopefully enjoyable — things to do as a manager.
Bucket #4 — Trending to Under-Performing
You need to start coaching them consistently. You absolutely have to — an inexperienced manager will make the mistake of not being proactive about this bucket. Meet weekly or regularly and work towards specific goals. You can't sugar-coat it; you have to be real about whether they are on track.
Your skip manager and potential HR business partner need to start becoming involved. You do your employee a disservice if you mislead them into thinking they're at #3 when they're still in #4. Set super clear goals and be crisp about the gaps. It is super important when a colleague enters #4 that they know what is at stake.
Key point: The goals set out at the start of the coaching period for Bucket #4 have to be finished in the coaching period. They can be updated or substituted if they cannot be completed for reasons outside the colleague's control. However if they are not completed, the person will need to move to Bucket #5.
Bucket #5 — Consistently Under-Performing
By definition, being in Bucket #5 means they've had consistent coaching but have not been able to close the gaps. It's related to work, it's not personal. Depending on your company's policy, they should be given either:
- Clear alternatives for leaving the company — e.g., some sort of severance option, or
- A performance improvement plan with very strict goals — making it abundantly clear that since they have not met role guidelines despite coaching (Bucket #4 should have taken 1–2 months), this is the final chance to improve performance.
If they choose the PIP route and do not perform against the crisp expectations outlined in the plan, they will be managed out.
Seniority matters: At more junior levels the time intervals and flexibility in Buckets #4 and #5 are longer. At more senior levels, transitions happen much faster — but hopefully by then you are familiar with how these transitions work and pick up on the feedback in Buckets #2 and #3 without needing formal coaching.
If you're in Buckets #2–5 — which statistically is probably 80% of people — to improve you need to listen keenly at every hint your manager and others give regarding feedback. Ask if it's unclear. You owe that to yourself.
OE: Top Errors Zero
I like to call this technique "Top Errors Zero." Like Inbox Zero, it works by focusing on root-causing and fixing your service or app's top errors and removing them.
First you have to record them (and potentially group them if they have customer-specific information or IDs). Once recorded, surface them in a dashboard — e.g., create a table of "Top Errors" sorted in descending count. Optionally include a time chart showing when these errors are occurring. This is as simple as grouping all API calls by error message.
Review this table regularly (e.g., weekly) and drive these errors to zero — e.g., as part of your on-call or ops work.
Caveat: This doesn't cover bad UX or situations where you aren't raising errors in the right place. But in general you'll be surprised how much quality improves for your customers by driving down top errors to zero.
Update: Also use Pareto charts to bucket the top errors or issues to investigate.