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engineering manager roles and responsibilities: 97 Things Every Engineering Manager Should Know Camille Fournier, 2019-11-21 Tap into the wisdom of experts to learn what every engineering manager should know. With 97 short and extremely useful tips for engineering managers, you'll discover new approaches to old problems, pick up road-tested best practices, and hone your management skills through sound advice. Managing people is hard, and the industry as a whole is bad at it. Many managers lack the experience, training, tools, texts, and frameworks to do it well. From mentoring interns to working in senior management, this book will take you through the stages of management and provide actionable advice on how to approach the obstacles you’ll encounter as a technical manager. A few of the 97 things you should know: Three Ways to Be the Manager Your Report Needs by Duretti Hirpa The First Two Questions to Ask When Your Team Is Struggling by Cate Huston Fire Them! by Mike Fisher The 5 Whys of Organizational Design by Kellan Elliott-McCrea Career Conversations by Raquel Vélez Using 6-Page Documents to Close Decisions by Ian Nowland Ground Rules in Meetings by Lara Hogan |
engineering manager roles and responsibilities: Staff Engineer Will Larson, 2021-02-28 At most technology companies, you'll reach Senior Software Engineer, the career level for software engineers, in five to eight years. At that career level, you'll no longer be required to work towards the next pro? motion, and being promoted beyond it is exceptional rather than ex? pected. At that point your career path will branch, and you have to decide between remaining at your current level, continuing down the path of technical excellence to become a Staff Engineer, or switching into engineering management. Of course, the specific titles vary by company, and you can replace Senior Engineer and Staff Engineer with whatever titles your company prefers.Over the past few years we've seen a flurry of books unlocking the en? gineering management career path, like Camille Fournier's The Man? ager's Path, Julie Zhuo's The Making of a Manager, Lara Hogan's Re? silient Management and my own, An Elegant Puzzle. The manage? ment career isn't an easy one, but increasingly there are maps avail? able for navigating it.On the other hand, the transition into Staff Engineer, and its further evolutions like Principal and Distinguished Engineer, remains chal? lenging and undocumented. What are the skills you need to develop to reach Staff Engineer? Are technical abilities alone sufficient to reach and succeed in that role? How do most folks reach this role? What is your manager's role in helping you along the way? Will you enjoy being a Staff Engineer or you will toil for years to achieve a role that doesn't suit you?Staff Engineer: Leadership beyond the management track is a pragmatic look at attaining and operate in these Staff-plus roles. |
engineering manager roles and responsibilities: Building Mobile Apps at Scale Gergely Orosz, 2021-04-06 While there is a lot of appreciation for backend and distributed systems challenges, there tends to be less empathy for why mobile development is hard when done at scale. This book collects challenges engineers face when building iOS and Android apps at scale, and common ways to tackle these. By scale, we mean having numbers of users in the millions and being built by large engineering teams. For mobile engineers, this book is a blueprint for modern app engineering approaches. For non-mobile engineers and managers, it is a resource with which to build empathy and appreciation for the complexity of world-class mobile engineering. The book covers iOS and Android mobile app challenges on these dimensions: Challenges due to the unique nature of mobile applications compared to the web, and to the backend. App complexity challenges. How do you deal with increasingly complicated navigation patterns? What about non-deterministic event combinations? How do you localize across several languages, and how do you scale your automated and manual tests? Challenges due to large engineering teams. The larger the mobile team, the more challenging it becomes to ensure a consistent architecture. If your company builds multiple apps, how do you balance not rewriting everything from scratch while moving at a fast pace, over waiting on centralized teams? Cross-platform approaches. The tooling to build mobile apps keeps changing. New languages, frameworks, and approaches that all promise to address the pain points of mobile engineering keep appearing. But which approach should you choose? Flutter, React Native, Cordova? Native apps? Reuse business logic written in Kotlin, C#, C++ or other languages? What engineering approaches do world-class mobile engineering teams choose in non-functional aspects like code quality, compliance, privacy, compliance, or with experimentation, performance, or app size? |
engineering manager roles and responsibilities: An Elegant Puzzle Will Larson, 2019-05-20 A human-centric guide to solving complex problems in engineering management, from sizing teams to handling technical debt. There’s a saying that people don’t leave companies, they leave managers. Management is a key part of any organization, yet the discipline is often self-taught and unstructured. Getting to the good solutions for complex management challenges can make the difference between fulfillment and frustration for teams—and, ultimately, between the success and failure of companies. Will Larson’s An Elegant Puzzle focuses on the particular challenges of engineering management—from sizing teams to handling technical debt to performing succession planning—and provides a path to the good solutions. Drawing from his experience at Digg, Uber, and Stripe, Larson has developed a thoughtful approach to engineering management for leaders of all levels at companies of all sizes. An Elegant Puzzle balances structured principles and human-centric thinking to help any leader create more effective and rewarding organizations for engineers to thrive in. |
engineering manager roles and responsibilities: Engineering Management C. M. Chang, 2016-11-25 Engineering Management: Meeting the Global Challenges prepares engineers to fulfill their managerial responsibilities, acquire useful business perspectives, and take on the much-needed leadership roles to meet the challenges in the new millennium. Value addition, customer focus, and business perspectives are emphasized throughout. Also underlined are discussions of leadership attributes, steps to acquire these attributes, the areas engineering managers are expected to add value, the web-based tools which can be aggressively applied to develop and sustain competitive advantages, the opportunities offered by market expansion into global regions, and the preparations required for engineering managers to become global leaders. The book is organized into three major sections: functions of engineering management, business fundamentals for engineering managers, and engineering management in the new millennium. This second edition refocuses on the new strategy for science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) professionals and managers to meet the global challenges through the creation of strategic differentiation and operational excellence. Major revisions include a new chapter on creativity and innovation, a new chapter on operational excellence, and combination of the chapters on financial accounting and financial management. The design strategy for this second edition strives for achieving the T-shaped competencies, with both broad-based perspectives and in-depth analytical skills. Such a background is viewed as essential for STEM professionals and managers to exert a strong leadership role in the dynamic and challenging marketplace. The material in this book will surely help engineering managers play key leadership roles in their organizations by optimally applying their combined strengths in engineering and management. |
engineering manager roles and responsibilities: EMPOWERED Marty Cagan, 2020-12-03 Great teams are comprised of ordinary people that are empowered and inspired. They are empowered to solve hard problems in ways their customers love yet work for their business. They are inspired with ideas and techniques for quickly evaluating those ideas to discover solutions that work: they are valuable, usable, feasible and viable. This book is about the idea and reality of achieving extraordinary results from ordinary people. Empowered is the companion to Inspired. It addresses the other half of the problem of building tech products?how to get the absolute best work from your product teams. However, the book's message applies much more broadly than just to product teams. Inspired was aimed at product managers. Empowered is aimed at all levels of technology-powered organizations: founders and CEO's, leaders of product, technology and design, and the countless product managers, product designers and engineers that comprise the teams. This book will not just inspire companies to empower their employees but will teach them how. This book will help readers achieve the benefits of truly empowered teams-- |
engineering manager roles and responsibilities: Become an Effective Software Engineering Manager James Stanier, 2020-06-09 Software startups make global headlines every day. As technology companies succeed and grow, so do their engineering departments. In your career, you'll may suddenly get the opportunity to lead teams: to become a manager. But this is often uncharted territory. How can you decide whether this career move is right for you? And if you do, what do you need to learn to succeed? Where do you start? How do you know that you're doing it right? What does it even mean? And isn't management a dirty word? This book will share the secrets you need to know to manage engineers successfully. Going from engineer to manager doesn't have to be intimidating. Engineers can be managers, and fantastic ones at that. Cast aside the rhetoric and focus on practical, hands-on techniques and tools. You'll become an effective and supportive team leader that your staff will look up to. Start with your transition to being a manager and see how that compares to being an engineer. Learn how to better organize information, feel productive, and delegate, but not micromanage. Discover how to manage your own boss, hire and fire, do performance and salary reviews, and build a great team. You'll also learn the psychology: how to ship while keeping staff happy, coach and mentor, deal with deadline pressure, handle sensitive information, and navigate workplace politics. Consider your whole department. How can you work with other teams to ensure best practice? How do you help form guilds and committees and communicate effectively? How can you create career tracks for individual contributors and managers? How can you support flexible and remote working? How can you improve diversity in the industry through your own actions? This book will show you how. Great managers can make the world a better place. Join us. |
engineering manager roles and responsibilities: The Manager's Path Camille Fournier, 2017-03-13 Managing people is difficult wherever you work. But in the tech industry, where management is also a technical discipline, the learning curve can be brutal—especially when there are few tools, texts, and frameworks to help you. In this practical guide, author Camille Fournier (tech lead turned CTO) takes you through each stage in the journey from engineer to technical manager. From mentoring interns to working with senior staff, you’ll get actionable advice for approaching various obstacles in your path. This book is ideal whether you’re a new manager, a mentor, or a more experienced leader looking for fresh advice. Pick up this book and learn how to become a better manager and leader in your organization. Begin by exploring what you expect from a manager Understand what it takes to be a good mentor, and a good tech lead Learn how to manage individual members while remaining focused on the entire team Understand how to manage yourself and avoid common pitfalls that challenge many leaders Manage multiple teams and learn how to manage managers Learn how to build and bootstrap a unifying culture in teams |
engineering manager roles and responsibilities: Blood Rites Barbara Ehrenreich, 2020-01-07 A New York Times Notable BookAn ALA Notable Book Original and illuminating. --The Washington Post What draws our species to war? What makes us see violence as a kind of sacred duty, or a ritual that boys must undergo to become men? Newly reissued in paperback, Blood Rites takes readers on an original journey from the elaborate human sacrifices of the ancient world to the carnage and holocaust of twentieth-century total war. Ehrenreich sifts deftly through the fragile records of prehistory and discovers the wellspring of war in an unexpected place -- not in a killer instinct unique to the males of our species, but in the blood rites early humans performed to reenact their terrifying experiences of predation by stronger carnivores. Brilliant in conception and rich in scope, Blood Rites is a monumental work that continues to transform our understanding of the greatest single threat to human life. |
engineering manager roles and responsibilities: Site Reliability Engineering Niall Richard Murphy, Betsy Beyer, Chris Jones, Jennifer Petoff, 2016-03-23 The overwhelming majority of a software system’s lifespan is spent in use, not in design or implementation. So, why does conventional wisdom insist that software engineers focus primarily on the design and development of large-scale computing systems? In this collection of essays and articles, key members of Google’s Site Reliability Team explain how and why their commitment to the entire lifecycle has enabled the company to successfully build, deploy, monitor, and maintain some of the largest software systems in the world. You’ll learn the principles and practices that enable Google engineers to make systems more scalable, reliable, and efficient—lessons directly applicable to your organization. This book is divided into four sections: Introduction—Learn what site reliability engineering is and why it differs from conventional IT industry practices Principles—Examine the patterns, behaviors, and areas of concern that influence the work of a site reliability engineer (SRE) Practices—Understand the theory and practice of an SRE’s day-to-day work: building and operating large distributed computing systems Management—Explore Google's best practices for training, communication, and meetings that your organization can use |
engineering manager roles and responsibilities: What Every Engineer Should Know About Project Management, Second Edition Arnold M. Ruskin, W. Eugene Estes, 1994-12-14 Covering the roles and responsibilities of the project manager, this second edition describes requirement specifications, work breakdown structures, project control and risk management, and offers new information on motivation, matrix arrangements, and project records. Discussing the anatomy of a project planning and control and techniques, the authors describe the project manager's entire range of responsibilities from initial planning to directing personnel, controlling work, and reporting results. The appendices cover work breakdown structure paradigms, cost versus time profiles, and checklists to assess work done. |
engineering manager roles and responsibilities: The Software Craftsman Sandro Mancuso, 2014-12-14 In The Software Craftsman, Sandro Mancuso explains what craftsmanship means to the developer and his or her organization, and shows how to live it every day in your real-world development environment. Mancuso shows how software craftsmanship fits with and helps students improve upon best-practice technical disciplines such as agile and lean, taking all development projects to the next level. Readers will learn how to change the disastrous perception that software developers are the same as factory workers, and that software projects can be run like factories. |
engineering manager roles and responsibilities: The Holloway Guide to Technical Recruiting and Hiring Osman (Ozzie) Osman, 2022-01-10 Learn how the best teams hire software engineers and fill technical roles. The Holloway Guide to Technical Recruiting and Hiring is the authoritative guide to growing software engineering teams effectively, written by and for hiring managers, recruiters, interviewers, and candidates. Hiring is rated as one of the biggest obstacles to growth by most CEOs. Hiring managers, recruiters, and interviewers all wrestle with how to source candidates, interview fairly and effectively, and ultimately motivate the right candidates to accept offers. Yet the process is costly, frustrating, and often stressful or unfair to candidates. Anyone who cares about building effective software teams will return to this book again and again. Inside, you'll find know-how from some of the most insightful and experienced leaders and practitioners—senior engineers, recruiters, entrepreneurs, and hiring managers—who’ve built teams from early-stage startups to thousand-person engineering organizations. The lead author of this guide, Ozzie Osman, previously led product engineering at Quora and teams at Google, and built (and sold) his own startup. Additional contributors include Aditya Agarwal, former CTO of Dropbox; Jennifer Kim, former head of diversity at Lever; veteran recruiters and startup founders Jose Guardado (founder of Build Talent and former Y Combinator) and Aline Lerner (CEO of Interviewing.io); and over a dozen others. Recruiting and hiring can be done well, in a way that has a positive impact on companies, employees, and every candidate. With the right foundations and practice, teams and candidates can approach a stressful and difficult process with knowledge and confidence. Ask your employer if you can expense this book—it's one of the highest-leverage investments they can make in your team. |
engineering manager roles and responsibilities: Think Like a Software Engineering Manager Akanksha Gupta, 2024-08-06 Unlock your full potential as an effective, efficient, and inspiring leader, and be the software engineering manager that your team deserves! Most development teams are only as good as their leader. In this practical guide, you’ll explore all aspects of the software engineering manager’s job, from operational practices to the core skills of handling humans. Think Like a Software Engineering Manager is full of all the skills you’ll need to thrive in software leadership, including: People and performance management Empathy and feedback Delegation and learning to let go Hiring amazing engineers and handling attrition Collaborating with cross-functional partners Managing expectations at all levels Implementing engineering and operational excellence Time and organizational change management Experienced team leader Akanksha Gupta helps you explore whether software engineering management is the right move for your career, guides you through preparing for the position, and gives you all the tools you need to thrive in the role. Thought-provoking exercises help you apply what you learn to your daily professional life, and prepare you for making the big decisions about software. Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF and ePub formats from Manning Publications. About the technology A software engineering manager needs to be an amazing communicator, an effective decision maker, and a thoughtful mentor. Your success depends on your ability to evaluate and manage projects, motivate and lead your team, and coolly handle whatever crisis each new day brings. It’s a big transition, and this book will guide you every step of the way. About the book Think Like a Software Engineering Manager teaches you how to hire, train, and lead a successful development team. You’ll start with building and managing your team to maximize performance. You’ll then quickly progress to strategies for delivering large scale projects, cultivating excellence in your projects, and managing change. Author Akanksha Gupta’s battle stories and industry anecdotes from her work at Amazon, Audible, Robinhood, and Microsoft reveal how the experts handle the biggest engineering management challenges. What's inside People and performance management Hiring amazing engineers and handling attrition Collaborating with cross-functional partners Practice for success with insightful exercises About the reader For new and aspiring software engineering managers. About the author Akanksha Gupta is an engineering leader at Amazon AWS. She has served as an engineering manager at Robinhood, Audible, and Microsoft and passionately champions the cause of empowering women within the tech industry. The technical editor on this book was Bruce Bergman. Table of Contents PART 1 1 Exploring the engineering manager role 2 Individual contributor to engineering manager 3 Managing people, teams, and yourself 4 Managing performance 5 Delegation: Learn to let go 6 Rewards and recognition 7 Hiring 8 Handling attrition PART 2 9 Working with cross-functional partners 10 Project management, execution, and delivery 11 Managing expectations PART 3 12 Engineering and operational excellence 13 Organizational change management 14 Time management 15 Beyond this book: Grow yourself |
engineering manager roles and responsibilities: Developer Hegemony Erik Dietrich, It’s been said that software is eating the planet. The modern economy—the world itself—relies on technology. Demand for the people who can produce it far outweighs the supply. So why do developers occupy largely subordinate roles in the corporate structure? Developer Hegemony explores the past, present, and future of the corporation and what it means for developers. While it outlines problems with the modern corporate structure, it’s ultimately a play-by-play of how to leave the corporate carnival and control your own destiny. And it’s an emboldening, specific vision of what software development looks like in the world of developer hegemony—one where developers band together into partner firms of “efficiencers,” finally able to command the pay, respect, and freedom that’s earned by solving problems no one else can. Developers, if you grow tired of being treated like geeks who can only be trusted to take orders and churn out code, consider this your call to arms. Bring about the autonomous future that’s rightfully yours. It’s time for developer hegemony. |
engineering manager roles and responsibilities: Work Happy Jill Geisler, 2012-06-05 Management guru Jill Geisler has coached countless men and women who want to build their leadership skills, help employees do their best work, and make workplaces happy and successful. In WORK HAPPY, she provides a practical, step-by-step guide, based on real-world experience, respected research, and lessons that will transform managers and their teams. It's a workshop-in-a-book, designed to produce positive, immediate and lasting results. Whether the reader is an experienced manager, a rookie boss or an aspiring leader, WORK HAPPY will supercharge their skills and celebrate the values that make anyone look forward to going to work. Jill Geisler offers concrete steps for improving each element of management including collaboration, communication, conflict resolution, motivation, coaching, and feedback, so that everyone on the team-whether in the office or working offsite-can do their best. WORK HAPPY takes management skills to the next level and proves that learning, leadership and life at work can (and should) be fun. |
engineering manager roles and responsibilities: Startup Engineering Management, 2nd Edition , 2014-07-23 If you're currently an engineer and have been offered a management job at a startup, this book is for you! If you're an engineer wondering what your manager is supposed to do for you, this book is for you as well! Drawing from the author's experience as an engineer and manager, this book explains: When to consider doing management work. How to put together a team. What to consider when interacting with engineers. How to hire top engineers for your startup. How to pick engineering leaders. How to define processes and a process cookbook. When you don't need a process. How to report to your managers. How compensation systems and promotion systems work, and when they fail. Foreword by Harper Reed. This kind of books are nowhere to be found...as an engineer probing in the dark for what's next I have looked very hard for career guidance for the past few years, and yours are the only books to give enlightenment. --- Cindy Zhou Whether experienced or aspiring, this book will be a great manual to help understand and be successful at this mysterious craft. --- Harper Reed, from the Foreword. |
engineering manager roles and responsibilities: Ask a Manager Alison Green, 2018-05-01 From the creator of the popular website Ask a Manager and New York’s work-advice columnist comes a witty, practical guide to 200 difficult professional conversations—featuring all-new advice! There’s a reason Alison Green has been called “the Dear Abby of the work world.” Ten years as a workplace-advice columnist have taught her that people avoid awkward conversations in the office because they simply don’t know what to say. Thankfully, Green does—and in this incredibly helpful book, she tackles the tough discussions you may need to have during your career. You’ll learn what to say when • coworkers push their work on you—then take credit for it • you accidentally trash-talk someone in an email then hit “reply all” • you’re being micromanaged—or not being managed at all • you catch a colleague in a lie • your boss seems unhappy with your work • your cubemate’s loud speakerphone is making you homicidal • you got drunk at the holiday party Praise for Ask a Manager “A must-read for anyone who works . . . [Alison Green’s] advice boils down to the idea that you should be professional (even when others are not) and that communicating in a straightforward manner with candor and kindness will get you far, no matter where you work.”—Booklist (starred review) “The author’s friendly, warm, no-nonsense writing is a pleasure to read, and her advice can be widely applied to relationships in all areas of readers’ lives. Ideal for anyone new to the job market or new to management, or anyone hoping to improve their work experience.”—Library Journal (starred review) “I am a huge fan of Alison Green’s Ask a Manager column. This book is even better. It teaches us how to deal with many of the most vexing big and little problems in our workplaces—and to do so with grace, confidence, and a sense of humor.”—Robert Sutton, Stanford professor and author of The No Asshole Rule and The Asshole Survival Guide “Ask a Manager is the ultimate playbook for navigating the traditional workforce in a diplomatic but firm way.”—Erin Lowry, author of Broke Millennial: Stop Scraping By and Get Your Financial Life Together |
engineering manager roles and responsibilities: Engineering Manager's Handbook Morgan Evans, 2023-09-08 A comprehensive guide to engineering management packed with tips, tricks, and techniques to drive results Key Features Acquire the necessary skills to manage engineers across various settings Gain valuable insights into engineering leadership, people management, and driving organizational change Discover pitfalls to avoid as a new engineering manager and understand their causation Purchase of the print or Kindle book includes a free PDF eBook Book DescriptionDelightful and customer-centric digital products have become an expectation in the world of business. Engineering managers are uniquely positioned to impact the success of these products and the software systems that power them. Skillful managers guide their teams and companies to develop functional and maintainable systems. This book helps you find your footing as an engineering manager, develop your leadership style, balance your time between engineering and managing, build successful engineering teams in different settings, and work within constraints without sacrificing technical standards or team empathy. You’ll learn practical techniques for establishing trust, developing beneficial habits, and creating a cohesive and high-performing engineering team. You’ll discover effective strategies to guide and contribute to your team’s efforts, facilitating productivity and collaboration. By the end of this book, you’ll have the tools and knowledge necessary to thrive as an engineering manager. Whether you’re just starting out in your role or seeking to enhance your leadership capabilities, this handbook will empower you to make a lasting impact and drive success in your organization.What you will learn Pitfalls common to new managers and how to avoid them Ways to establish trust and authority Methods and tools for building world-class engineering teams Behaviors to build and maintain a great reputation as a leader Mechanisms to avoid costly missteps that end up requiring re-work Strategies to increase employee retention on your team Techniques to facilitate better product outcomes Who this book is forThis book is a valuable resource for software engineers and developers transitioning into engineering management roles, equipping you with best practices and insights to navigate the new responsibilities effectively. Whether you're a newly promoted engineering manager or an experienced one seeking immediate answers to challenges, this comprehensive and up-to-date guide provides the support you need. Familiarity with the software development lifecycle, including concepts like version control, code review, and deployment, is required. |
engineering manager roles and responsibilities: Optimized C++ Kurt Guntheroth, 2016-04-27 In today’s fast and competitive world, a program’s performance is just as important to customers as the features it provides. This practical guide teaches developers performance-tuning principles that enable optimization in C++. You’ll learn how to make code that already embodies best practices of C++ design run faster and consume fewer resources on any computer—whether it’s a watch, phone, workstation, supercomputer, or globe-spanning network of servers. Author Kurt Guntheroth provides several running examples that demonstrate how to apply these principles incrementally to improve existing code so it meets customer requirements for responsiveness and throughput. The advice in this book will prove itself the first time you hear a colleague exclaim, “Wow, that was fast. Who fixed something?” Locate performance hot spots using the profiler and software timers Learn to perform repeatable experiments to measure performance of code changes Optimize use of dynamically allocated variables Improve performance of hot loops and functions Speed up string handling functions Recognize efficient algorithms and optimization patterns Learn the strengths—and weaknesses—of C++ container classes View searching and sorting through an optimizer’s eye Make efficient use of C++ streaming I/O functions Use C++ thread-based concurrency features effectively |
engineering manager roles and responsibilities: Continuous Discovery Habits Teresa Torres, 2021-05-19 If you haven't had the good fortune to be coached by a strong leader or product coach, this book can help fill that gap and set you on the path to success. - Marty Cagan How do you know that you are making a product or service that your customers want? How do you ensure that you are improving it over time? How do you guarantee that your team is creating value for your customers in a way that creates value for your business? In this book, you'll learn a structured and sustainable approach to continuous discovery that will help you answer each of these questions, giving you the confidence to act while also preparing you to be wrong. You'll learn to balance action with doubt so that you can get started without being blindsided by what you don't get right. If you want to discover products that customers love-that also deliver business results-this book is for you. |
engineering manager roles and responsibilities: The Software Engineering Manager Interview Guide Vidal Graupera, Interviewing can be challenging, time-consuming, stressful, frustrating, and full of disappointments. My goal is to help make things easier for you so you can get the engineering leadership job you want. The Software Engineering Manager Interview Guide is a comprehensive, no-nonsense book about landing an engineering leadership role at a top-tier tech company. You will learn how to master the different kinds of engineering management interview questions. If you only pick up one or two tips from this book, it could make the difference in getting the dream job you want. This guide contains a collection of 150+ real-life management and behavioral questions I was asked on phone screens and by panels during onsite interviews for engineering management positions at a variety of big-name and top-tier tech companies in the San Francisco Bay Area such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, LinkedIn, Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, Pinterest, Salesforce, Intuit, Autodesk, et al. In this book, I discuss my experiences and reflections mainly from the candidate’s perspective. Your experience will vary. The random variables include who will be on your panel, what exactly they will ask, the level of training and mood of the interviewers, their preferences, and biases. While you cannot control any of those variables, you can control how prepared you are, and hopefully, this book will help you in that process. I will share with you everything I’ve learned while keeping this book short enough to read on a plane ride. I will share tips I picked up along the way. If you are interviewing this guide will serve you as a playbook to prepare, or if you are hiring give you ideas as to what you might ask an engineering management candidate yourself. CONTENTS: Introduction Chapter 1: Answering Behavioral Interview Questions Chapter 2: The Job Interviews Phone Screens Prep Call with the Recruiter Onsite Company Values Coding, Algorithms and Data structures System Design and Architecture Interviews Generic Design Of A Popular System A Design Specific To A Domain Design Of A System Your Team Worked On Lunch Interview Managerial and Leadership Bar Raiser Unique One-Off Interviews Chapter 3: Tips To Succeed How To Get The Interviews Scheduling and Timelines Interview Feedback Mock Interviews Panelists First Impressions Thank You Notes Ageism Chapter 4: Example Behavioral and Competency Questions General Questions Feedback and Performance Management Prioritization and Execution Strategy and Vision Hiring Talent and Building a Team Working With Tech Leads, Team Leads and Technology Dealing With Conflicts Diversity and Inclusion |
engineering manager roles and responsibilities: Behind Closed Doors Johanna Rothman, Esther Derby, 2005-09-19 Great management is difficult to see as it occurs. It's possible to see the results of great management, but it's not easy to see how managers achieve those results. Great management happens in one-on-one meetings and with other managers---all in private. It's hard to learn management by example when you can't see it. You can learn to be a better manager---even a great manager---with this guide. You'll follow along as Sam, a manager just brought on board, learns the ropes and deals with his new team over the course of his first eight weeks on the job. From scheduling and managing resources to helping team members grow and prosper, you'll be there as Sam makes it happen. You'll find powerful tips covering: Delegating effectively Using feedback and goal-setting Developing influence Handling one-on-one meetings Coaching and mentoring Deciding what work to do---and what not to do ...and more. Full of tips and practical advice on the most important aspects of management, this is one of those books that can make a lasting andimmediate impact on your career. |
engineering manager roles and responsibilities: Debugging Teams Brian W. Fitzpatrick, Ben Collins-Sussman, 2015-10-13 In the course of their 20+-year engineering careers, authors Brian Fitzpatrick and Ben Collins-Sussman have picked up a treasure trove of wisdom and anecdotes about how successful teams work together. Their conclusion? Even among people who have spent decades learning the technical side of their jobs, most haven’t really focused on the human component. Learning to collaborate is just as important to success. If you invest in the soft skills of your job, you can have a much greater impact for the same amount of effort. The authors share their insights on how to lead a team effectively, navigate an organization, and build a healthy relationship with the users of your software. This is valuable information from two respected software engineers whose popular series of talks—including Working with Poisonous People—has attracted hundreds of thousands of followers. |
engineering manager roles and responsibilities: The Making of a Manager Julie Zhuo, 2019-03-19 Instant Wall Street Journal Bestseller! Congratulations, you're a manager! After you pop the champagne, accept the shiny new title, and step into this thrilling next chapter of your career, the truth descends like a fog: you don't really know what you're doing. That's exactly how Julie Zhuo felt when she became a rookie manager at the age of 25. She stared at a long list of logistics--from hiring to firing, from meeting to messaging, from planning to pitching--and faced a thousand questions and uncertainties. How was she supposed to spin teamwork into value? How could she be a good steward of her reports' careers? What was the secret to leading with confidence in new and unexpected situations? Now, having managed dozens of teams spanning tens to hundreds of people, Julie knows the most important lesson of all: great managers are made, not born. If you care enough to be reading this, then you care enough to be a great manager. The Making of a Manager is a modern field guide packed everyday examples and transformative insights, including: * How to tell a great manager from an average manager (illustrations included) * When you should look past an awkward interview and hire someone anyway * How to build trust with your reports through not being a boss * Where to look when you lose faith and lack the answers Whether you're new to the job, a veteran leader, or looking to be promoted, this is the handbook you need to be the kind of manager you wish you had. |
engineering manager roles and responsibilities: Peopleware Tom DeMarco, Timothy R. Lister, 2013 Most software project problems are sociological, not technological. Peopleware is a book on managing software projects. |
engineering manager roles and responsibilities: The Engineering Is Easy Bruce E Podwal, 2019-03-22 The Engineering is Easy will help project managers learn how to overcome pitfalls in this self-help guide for managing projects. Written in memoir format, this book presents real-world case studies to illustrate good practices and lessons learned for numerous project circumstances. |
engineering manager roles and responsibilities: Proceedings of Government/Industry Forum National Research Council, Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences, Board on Infrastructure and the Constructed Environment, Committee for Oversight and Assessment of U.S. Department of Energy Project Management, 2002-05-29 Recurrent problems with project performance in the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) in the 1990s raised questions in Congress about the practices and processes used by the department to manage projects. The 105th Committee of Conference on Energy and Water Resources directed DOE to investigate establishing a project review process. Many of the findings and recommendations in this series of reports identified the need for improved planning in the early project stages (front-end planning) to get the project off to the right start, and the continuous monitoring of projects by senior management to make sure the project stays on course. These reports also stressed the need for DOE to act as an owner, not a contractor, and to train its personnel to function not as traditional project managers but as knowledgeable owner's representatives in dealing with projects and contractors. The NRC Committee for Oversight and Assessment of Department of Energy Project Management determined that it would be helpful for DOE to sponsor a forum in which representatives from DOE and from leading corporations with large, successful construction programs would discuss how the owner's role is conducted in government and in industry. In so doing, the committee does not claim that all industrial firms are better at project management than the DOE. Far from it-the case studies represented at this forum were selected specifically because these firms were perceived by the committee to be exemplars of the very best practices in project management. Nor is it implied that reaching this level is easy; the industry speakers themselves show that excellence in project management is difficult to achieve and perhaps even more difficult to maintain. Nevertheless, they have been successful in doing so, through constant attention by senior management. |
engineering manager roles and responsibilities: The Open Organization Jim Whitehurst, 2015 Based on open source principles of transparency, participation, and collaboration, open management challenges conventional business ideas about what companies are, how they run, and how they make money. This book provides the blueprint for putting it into practice in your own firm. He covers challenges that have been missing from the conversation to date, among them: how to scale engagement; how to have healthy debates that net progress; and how to attract and keep the Social Generation of workers. Through a mix of vibrant stories, candid lessons, and tested processes, Whitehurst shows how Red Hat has blown the traditional operating model to pieces by emerging out of a pure bottom up culture and learning how to execute it at scale. And he explains what other companies are, and need to be doing to bring this open style into all facets of the organization. |
engineering manager roles and responsibilities: Engineering Management C. M. Chang, 2016-11-25 Engineering Management: Meeting the Global Challenges prepares engineers to fulfill their managerial responsibilities, acquire useful business perspectives, and take on the much-needed leadership roles to meet the challenges in the new millennium. Value addition, customer focus, and business perspectives are emphasized throughout. Also underlined are discussions of leadership attributes, steps to acquire these attributes, the areas engineering managers are expected to add value, the web-based tools which can be aggressively applied to develop and sustain competitive advantages, the opportunities offered by market expansion into global regions, and the preparations required for engineering managers to become global leaders. The book is organized into three major sections: functions of engineering management, business fundamentals for engineering managers, and engineering management in the new millennium. This second edition refocuses on the new strategy for science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) professionals and managers to meet the global challenges through the creation of strategic differentiation and operational excellence. Major revisions include a new chapter on creativity and innovation, a new chapter on operational excellence, and combination of the chapters on financial accounting and financial management. The design strategy for this second edition strives for achieving the T-shaped competencies, with both broad-based perspectives and in-depth analytical skills. Such a background is viewed as essential for STEM professionals and managers to exert a strong leadership role in the dynamic and challenging marketplace. The material in this book will surely help engineering managers play key leadership roles in their organizations by optimally applying their combined strengths in engineering and management. |
engineering manager roles and responsibilities: Communication for Engineers Chris Laffra, 2021-02-09 This book was written by a software engineer for software engineers. It provides an overview of various communication skills and techniques that are relevant to people working in the software industry. Some of the communications skills discussed in this book have a generic nature, such as self-awareness. Others are more specific for engineers, such as writing clean code. The result is a comprehensive coverage of communication as it concerns software engineers with many practical and relevant tips to follow. The book sometimes focuses on communication between engineers and at other times, it explores how to interact with others, typically in a business context. When we say engineers in this book, we generalize and refer to software engineers, programmers, developers, designers, engineering managers, PMs, software architects, or anyone else working in software development.In this book, each communication skill will be discussed with specific tips to improve yourself in a well-structured, constructive, and productive fashion. The end goal is to increase your impact as an engineer by focusing on soft skills that complement your existing coding and problem solving skills. |
engineering manager roles and responsibilities: Data Pipelines Pocket Reference James Densmore, 2021-02-10 Data pipelines are the foundation for success in data analytics. Moving data from numerous diverse sources and transforming it to provide context is the difference between having data and actually gaining value from it. This pocket reference defines data pipelines and explains how they work in today's modern data stack. You'll learn common considerations and key decision points when implementing pipelines, such as batch versus streaming data ingestion and build versus buy. This book addresses the most common decisions made by data professionals and discusses foundational concepts that apply to open source frameworks, commercial products, and homegrown solutions. You'll learn: What a data pipeline is and how it works How data is moved and processed on modern data infrastructure, including cloud platforms Common tools and products used by data engineers to build pipelines How pipelines support analytics and reporting needs Considerations for pipeline maintenance, testing, and alerting |
engineering manager roles and responsibilities: The Idea Factory Jon Gertner, 2012-03-15 The definitive history of America’s greatest incubator of innovation and the birthplace of some of the 20th century’s most influential technologies “Filled with colorful characters and inspiring lessons . . . The Idea Factory explores one of the most critical issues of our time: What causes innovation?” —Walter Isaacson, The New York Times Book Review “Compelling . . . Gertner's book offers fascinating evidence for those seeking to understand how a society should best invest its research resources.” —The Wall Street Journal From its beginnings in the 1920s until its demise in the 1980s, Bell Labs-officially, the research and development wing of AT&T-was the biggest, and arguably the best, laboratory for new ideas in the world. From the transistor to the laser, from digital communications to cellular telephony, it's hard to find an aspect of modern life that hasn't been touched by Bell Labs. In The Idea Factory, Jon Gertner traces the origins of some of the twentieth century's most important inventions and delivers a riveting and heretofore untold chapter of American history. At its heart this is a story about the life and work of a small group of brilliant and eccentric men-Mervin Kelly, Bill Shockley, Claude Shannon, John Pierce, and Bill Baker-who spent their careers at Bell Labs. Today, when the drive to invent has become a mantra, Bell Labs offers us a way to enrich our understanding of the challenges and solutions to technological innovation. Here, after all, was where the foundational ideas on the management of innovation were born. |
engineering manager roles and responsibilities: High Growth Handbook Elad Gil, 2018-07-17 High Growth Handbook is the playbook for growing your startup into a global brand. Global technology executive, serial entrepreneur, and angel investor Elad Gil has worked with high-growth tech companies including Airbnb, Twitter, Google, Stripe, and Square as they’ve grown from small companies into global enterprises. Across all of these breakout companies, Gil has identified a set of common patterns and created an accessible playbook for scaling high-growth startups, which he has now codified in High Growth Handbook. In this definitive guide, Gil covers key topics, including: · The role of the CEO · Managing a board · Recruiting and overseeing an executive team · Mergers and acquisitions · Initial public offerings · Late-stage funding. Informed by interviews with some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley, including Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn), Marc Andreessen (Andreessen Horowitz), and Aaron Levie (Box), High Growth Handbook presents crystal-clear guidance for navigating the most complex challenges that confront leaders and operators in high-growth startups. |
engineering manager roles and responsibilities: The Age of Discontinuity Peter F. Drucker, 2013-10-22 The Age of Discontinuity: Guidelines to Our Changing Society describes the discontinuities that are changing the structure and the meaning of economy, politics, and society. Major discontinuities exist in four areas: the knowledge technologies; changes in the world's economy; a society of organizations; and the knowledge society. This book is organized into four parts encompassing 17 chapters. Each part represents the four areas of discontinuities. Part I highlights the growth in major industries and businesses, along with economic policies related to tax incentives. Part II looks into the status of the global economy, the disparity between the rich and poor countries, and the concepts and application of the economic theory demonstrating a closed economy controlled from within by national, monetary, credit, and tax policies. Part III examines the changes in the political matrix of social and economic life. This part deals particularly with the theory of pluralism and organizations, as well as the creation of socio-political reality. Part IV focuses on the changes in the cost center and the crucial resource of the economy. Knowledge changes involve changes in labor forces and work. This book will prove useful to economists, public servants, sociologists, and researchers. |
engineering manager roles and responsibilities: Programming JavaScript Applications Eric Elliott, 2014-06-26 Take advantage of JavaScript’s power to build robust web-scale or enterprise applications that are easy to extend and maintain. By applying the design patterns outlined in this practical book, experienced JavaScript developers will learn how to write flexible and resilient code that’s easier—yes, easier—to work with as your code base grows. JavaScript may be the most essential web programming language, but in the real world, JavaScript applications often break when you make changes. With this book, author Eric Elliott shows you how to add client- and server-side features to a large JavaScript application without negatively affecting the rest of your code. Examine the anatomy of a large-scale JavaScript application Build modern web apps with the capabilities of desktop applications Learn best practices for code organization, modularity, and reuse Separate your application into different layers of responsibility Build efficient, self-describing hypermedia APIs with Node.js Test, integrate, and deploy software updates in rapid cycles Control resource access with user authentication and authorization Expand your application’s reach through internationalization |
engineering manager roles and responsibilities: MITRE Systems Engineering Guide , 2012-06-05 |
engineering manager roles and responsibilities: Managing Humans Michael Lopp, 2007-10-18 Managing Humans is a selection of the best essays from Michael Lopp's popular website Rands in Repose(www.randsinrepose.com). Lopp is one of the most sought-after IT managers in Silicon Valley, and draws on his experiences at Apple, Netscape, Symantec, and Borland. This book reveals a variety of different approaches for creating innovative, happy development teams. It covers handling conflict, managing wildly differing personality types, infusing innovation into insane product schedules, and figuring out how to build lasting and useful engineering culture. The essays are biting, hilarious, and always informative. |
engineering manager roles and responsibilities: Managing Change in Organizations Project Management Institute, 2013-08-01 Managing Change in Organizations: A Practice Guide is unique in that it integrates two traditionally disparate world views on managing change: organizational development/human resources and portfolio/program/project management. By bringing these together, professionals from both worlds can use project management approaches to effectively create and manage change. This practice guide begins by providing the reader with a framework for creating organizational agility and judging change readiness. |
engineering manager roles and responsibilities: Talking with Tech Leads Patrick Kua, 2015-04-15 A book for Tech Leads, from Tech Leads. Discover how more than 35 Tech Leads find the delicate balance between the technical and non-technical worlds. Discover the challenges a Tech Lead faces and how to overcome them. You may be surprised by the lessons they have to share. |
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Toward establishing a link between psychomotor task complexity …
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Published in Affiliation with the European Structural Integrity Society. The Engineering Failure Analysis journal provides an essential reference for analysing and preventing engineering …
Engineering Geology | Journal | ScienceDirect.com by Elsevier
Engineering Geology is an international interdisciplinary journal bridging the fields of the earth sciences and engineering, particularly geological and geotechnical engineering.The focus of …
Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence | Journal ...
A journal of IFAC, the International Federation of Automatic Control Artificial Intelligence (AI) is playing a major role in the fourth industrial revolution and we are seeing a lot of evolution in …
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Food Hydrocolloids | Vol 168, December 2025 - ScienceDirect
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The effect of age on mapping auditory icons to visual icons for ...
Oct 1, 1996 · This research explored the abilities of subjects in grade 1 (6–7 years old) and grade 3 (8–9 years old) to identify auditory icons that are commonly introduced in software …
Toward establishing a link between psychomotor task complexity …
Oct 1, 1996 · The objective of this research is to propose and validate a link between an existing information processing model for psychomotor tasks and a comprehensive characterization of …
Engineering | Journal | ScienceDirect.com by Elsevier
The official journal of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and Higher Education Press. Engineering is an international open-access journal that was launched by the Chinese …
Pickering stabilization of double emulsions: Basic concepts, …
Double emulsions (DEs) offer unique compartmentalized structures but are inherently unstable, prompting significant scientific and industrial efforts …
Engineering Structures | Journal | ScienceDirect.com by Elsevier
Engineering Structures provides a forum for a broad blend of scientific and technical papers to reflect the evolving needs of the structural engineering and structural mechanics communities. …
Engineering Failure Analysis | Journal - ScienceDirect
Published in Affiliation with the European Structural Integrity Society. The Engineering Failure Analysis journal provides an essential reference for analysing and preventing engineering …
Engineering Geology | Journal | ScienceDirect.com by Elsevier
Engineering Geology is an international interdisciplinary journal bridging the fields of the earth sciences and engineering, particularly geological and geotechnical engineering.The focus of …
Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence | Journal ...
A journal of IFAC, the International Federation of Automatic Control Artificial Intelligence (AI) is playing a major role in the fourth industrial revolution and we are seeing a lot of evolution in …
High-Entropy Approach vs. Traditional Doping Strategy for …
Jun 1, 2025 · The traditional doping strategy has emerged as an effective method for addressing challenges such as irreversible phase transitions and poor cycling s…
Food Hydrocolloids | Vol 168, December 2025 - ScienceDirect
Read the latest articles of Food Hydrocolloids at ScienceDirect.com, Elsevier’s leading platform of peer-reviewed scholarly literature