The Need for Engineering Management

As someone who has worked in technology for many years, I've often felt that engineers and programmers were not being managed optimally. For a long time, I thought that tech teams should be led by engineers - people who understand the work because they've done it themselves.

In many companies, engineers report directly to non-technical managers. While intelligent people, these managers lack hands-on engineering expertise. They struggle to make informed decisions about technical strategy and priorities. They can't set realistic engineering goals or accurately identify risks. Without immersion in the details, non-technical managers have a hard time adequately supporting and guiding engineering teams.

In other cases, teams report to former engineers/technical people who've moved into management. However, these people can quickly become outdated technically as languages, frameworks and methodologies rapidly evolve. Without staying hands-on, their own skills stagnate. They may not grasp newer technologies and techniques. So like non-technical managers, they also have a hard time providing meaningful coaching and direction to engineers.

Both these management styles lead to demotivated teams and poor outcomes. Engineers get frustrated under managers who don't understand their day-to-day work. They receive little helpful guidance or development opportunities. Without technically competent leadership, teams flounder and underperform.

Tech Leads

Many engineering teams have tech leads who provide technical guidance but don't officially manage the team. While tech leads contribute useful technical direction, they have significant blind-spots that limit their ability to lead.

Tech leads tend to be very focused on code-level details and features. They don't have visibility into the bigger picture - the product strategy, customer research, and business goals. This narrow perspective makes it hard for them to connect the team's daily work back to the broader vision and motivate them around meaningful outcomes.

Without immersion in the product thinking and business context, tech leads struggle to inspire and engage teams. They operate tactically at the feature level rather than linking work to overarching product values, problems being solved, and customer needs being addressed.

Tech leads may guide technical implementation, but they lack the skills to coach and develop engineers professionally. They tend to be individual contributors promoted for their technical strengths rather than their people and leadership abilities.

Scrum + Chapters

Some organizations attempt to split people management and project management by having Chapter Leads handle career development while relying on Scrum for deliverables. However, this disconnect between Chapters and Scrum can cause issues.

Engineers end up with misaligned priorities because their Chapter Lead and Product Owner have competing goals. The chapter focus could be on growth and learning whereas the product focus is on sprint outputs. This puts engineers in a difficult position.

Chapter Leads are disconnected from the day-to-day work their engineers are doing. They can't provide effective mentoring and coaching because they lack the context Scrum would provide. But Scrum rituals alone are insufficient for people management.

This division of labor results in knowledge silos instead of collaborative teamwork. Chapter Leads and Scrum Masters don't coordinate or integrate priorities. Engineers feel torn between their chapter and their scrum team.

Critical collaboration is lost when the technology, design, and product skills needed for a project are aligned to different chapters. Cross-functional integration suffers.

Without the people management elements built into the team, sprint planning and retrospectives become too execution focused. They are no longer effective with this singular view.

For teams to thrive, the personal aspect of mentorship and growth needs to be tightly integrated with the day-to-day work. Separating them into Chapters and Scrum silos causes unnecessary friction and reduces organizational agility. People management should happen within mature Agile teams, not alongside them.

Engineering Manager

In my view, the solution is a dedicated engineering management role. Engineering managers not only have technical backgrounds, but remain hands-on technical contributors themselves. This immersion allows them to deeply understand the engineering work. At the same time, engineering managers possess strong leadership, coaching, and mentoring skills. This equips them to effectively guide and develop their teams.

Engineering managers avoid the pitfalls of tech leads who focus too narrowly on code details. Tech leads lack visibility into product strategy, customer needs and business goals. They can't connect work back to purpose and motivation. Engineering managers operate from a broader perspective so they can inspire teams around the bigger picture.

Companies like Google and Amazon use engineering management to great success. Their complex tech projects require managers with both engineering expertise and leadership skills. Engineering management is critical for building productive, motivated teams that can handle sophisticated technical work.

Engineering managers create productive teams because they can:

• Relate to engineers and earn their respect
• Make informed decisions about technical strategy
• Give useful feedback and coaching to engineers
• Advocate for resources, budget, and headcount
• Identify technical risks and guide appropriate solutions
• Translate business needs into engineering plans

For all these reasons, I believe engineering management can vastly improve the performance and morale of software teams. It allows managers to technically guide teams while also fostering their professional growth and engagement with the company mission. Developing engineering management is crucial for technology leadership.