Considering the Engineering Management path?

A frequent question I hear is "how do I know if people leadership is the right path for me?"

Fortunately, there are many brilliant thought leaders who have published their advice on this topic. This post is a compilation of my favorite articles, resources, and reflection exercises on the topic.

Articles:

• Charity Majors, EM: The Pendulum or the Ladder

• Karl Hughes, What you give up when moving into Engineering Management

• Matthew Vanderzee, Should I become an Engineering Manager?

Books:

• The Manager’s Path, Camille Fournier

• Managing Humans, Micheal Lopp

• Radical Candor, Kim Scott

Self reflection exercises:

• Set a timer to go off every hour throughout your workday. At the hour, take a pulse and write down your energy level on a scale of 1-10;

  • Do I feel excited and energized with the work I was doing the last hour?

  • Did the last hour seem to pass slower, or quicker?

  • Capture data for at least 2 weeks and organize the activities into themes:

    • Coding

    • Reviewing code

    • Architecting or designing a solution

    • Meetings

  • Analyze the themes to track how your energy level changed; are there patterns to indicate if certain activities (coding, meeting discussions) made you feel energized, or that time seemed to fly by?

• Make a list of the responsibilities/tasks you would & wouldn’t miss about being an individual contributor if you moved into a Manager role

• Make a list of areas/EM activities/meetings that you would like to get more exposure to. Make a plan with <your leader> to start attending/fulfilling those activities.

• Request feedback from key partners on the key skills identified step 1; teams that you work with, <Engineers> that you have mentored