Diary of an Engineering Manager - On Leadership

Become the Manager You've Always Wanted To Have

Introduction

Those who know me well know that I’m an engineer at heart. I’ve been in this industry for enough years to have seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. The one thing that has kept me in this industry (aside from paying the bills) is my passion for what I do. The tech industry is a brutal one. If you’re not passionate about what you do, you will be chewed up and spat out. The long hours, the stress, the uncompromising deadlines, and, to some extent, the challenging people you need to deal with from time to time can be overwhelming.

This industry is not for the faint of heart. But if you love what you do, it puts all the negatives in a different perspective. That’s why I wasn’t keen at first to go back to management. When I say “go back,” I mean that I was a manager for a little over a year during the beginning phase of my career. I left that role when I decided to leave Israel, my home country, and pursue a graduate degree in Software Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. After graduation, I knew I would go back to being an engineer and use the skills I had gained in grad school.

However, the truth is that I’ve always remained a manager. It took me time to realize that. I never quit that role, even when I was an IC (individual contributor). I was always behaving in that role, even when I wasn’t expected to. Most people might think to themselves, “Ahhh, you like bossing people around?” The answer is NO! I don’t boss people around. In fact, being “the boss” is my least favorite part of being a manager. What I mean when I say that I’ve always been a manager is that I demonstrated the behaviors I consider essential for good managers, long before I even joined the tech industry.

The Essence of Leadership

I was born and raised in Israel, a country where, at the age of 18, you are enlisted by law into the military. My parents served in the military, my dad was a high-ranking officer, and everyone around me, especially those I admired, were officers in the IDF. Growing up in Israel, I had a very “clear” picture of what a leader should look like and be, and it was very far from how I perceived myself.

What’s funny is that even when I joined the military and ended up being an officer, I felt like an imposter. I used to look at the officer ranks on my shoulders every once in a while to remind myself that it was real. I commanded soldiers but never felt like the charismatic, “follow-me” kind of person. It is only today that I realize how wrong I was.

I received feedback and signals all along that could have served as good indications of my leadership skills. But I refused to accept them, mostly because those signals weren't about my physical appearance or tremendous charisma, which I always thought were prerequisites for being the ultimate leader. They were about my behaviors, my traits, and my values: things like responsibility, accountability, truthfulness, and a very developed sense of justice. Most of all, they were about my never-ending passion for coaching, mentoring, and growing people (seeing them as an extension of myself, investing in them, caring for them, and helping them reach their true potential).

It is only today, so many years after my military service, that I finally understand the truth about leadership. People don’t follow the stereotypical leaders I grew up thinking of only because they’re strong, tall, and charismatic. They follow these people because they see in them something worth following.

Are you worth following?

Being a leader in the civilian world (and even more so in the tech industry) can be much more challenging than in the military. While you’re not dealing with life-or-death situations, in the civilian world, you can’t order people around because of your rank. In other words, being “the boss” can only get you so far before it yields the exact opposite of what you want. Even in the military, I saw examples of commanders who were not cut out for the role because they lacked that understanding. Their rank helped them up to a point, but eventually, people didn’t want to follow them. They only did so because they had to.

In the civilian world, especially in the very lucrative tech industry, people have choices. No one will stick around with a manager who only knows how to use their “rank.” People want managers worth following, and to that end, they will quit their jobs if they don’t feel that way. Have you heard the phrase, “People don’t leave bad jobs; they leave bad managers”? It is so true. I’ve seen it happen time and time again. People leave their jobs because of a bad manager, not because of the work they do or the company they work for.

Becoming a Manager That People Want To Follow

Becoming a manager that people want to follow is not easy. It requires a lot of self-awareness, self-reflection, and hard work. It requires understanding yourself, your strengths and weaknesses, and working on them. It requires understanding the people you manage and helping them grow and reach their true potential.

To become a manager worth following, you need to learn from the good managers you've had in your life and model yourself after them. But just as importantly, you need to learn from the bad ones: the managers you dreaded working with and swore you'd never become. Those who made you want to quit your job. Those who made it hard to get out of bed in the morning.
Both these types of managers are great teachers.

Two Managers That Taught Me Valuable Lessons About Leadership

The Good Lesson

Early in my career as a software engineer, I worked for a mid-sized company. I was lucky to have very talented managers who were great teachers. I developed close relationships with them, even outside of work, and with one of them, I’ve remained close friends to this day. But it was another manager I had before I left to do my grad studies who really taught me a valuable lesson about leadership.

I was working on a bug in a piece of code I had never seen before. The code was notorious for being difficult to reason about, mostly because of the person who wrote it. The only other person who understood that code well was my manager. I was stuck. It was already 8:00 PM, and my manager, who was a family man, stayed with me to help. He guided me through the code, helped me find the root cause, and fix the bug. It wasn’t easy, even for him. But we stayed together in the office until midnight.

When we finally solved the bug and checked it in, we were both exhausted. He then told me to send an email to all the involved parties to say the bug was resolved. When I wrote the email, I wanted to include his name and give him credit. However, he insisted that I not include him and only write it on my behalf. Later, I realized why. He wanted me to get the credit. He wanted other managers to see what a hardworking and dedicated engineer I was.

At that moment, he showed me that great leadership comes from putting the success of your team and its members above that of your own. The fact that I remember this story so well, almost 15 years after it happened, is a testament to the profound impact he had on me.

The Bad Lesson

A couple of years ago, I worked at another mid-sized company here in the U.S. I was a Principal Engineer. My manager at the time was a close friend of mine, and I loved working with him. His manager, however, taught us both valuable lessons about leadership and management, particularly lessons on what not to do.

I won’t go into all the details about that manager, but I will point out some behaviors that stood out. That manager was mostly concerned with her own well-being. Her primary concern was not to work but to go on vacations. She was unprofessional and lacked technical abilities, despite being an Engineering Senior Director. Worst of all, her self-preservation was her primary objective. To put it in layman’s terms, she didn’t hesitate to throw anyone and everyone under the bus, and she did so many times.

My friend, who was my manager, pointed out something very insightful: despite her tenure at a very large tech company, where she had also been a manager for multiple years, no one had followed her to the new company. He said this to highlight an important truth: when great managers leave, people from their team often want to leave with them. That manager was so bad that my friend eventually left the company. Not long after, I followed him to the same organization he had joined.

To become a great manager that people want to follow, you need to embrace both the good and the bad and learn from each.

Its not about being perfect

Being an engineering manager is hard, especially if you like (and are good at) being an engineer. As a manager, you are expected to grow and nurture your team. You are measured by the outcomes of your team, not just your own. That’s why many new managers fail: they want to control outcomes to favor themselves. They forget their job is to help the team achieve those outcomes, and the journey isn’t always smooth.

Some managers are too controlling, while others are too hands-off. Both extremes are detrimental to the team’s success. The balance matters, and it’s not easy to find.

There are instances where I was too controlling: trying to be on top of everything, which stifled my team's growth. Other times, I delegated without verifying, leading to poor performance and damage control. I’ve come to realize there is no silver bullet. There is no perfection. As a manager, I make mistakes all the time. I embrace them and learn from them.

What keeps me going are the values instilled in me from a very young age, and the passion I have for my work and for my team. I remind myself that I’m not perfect, but I strive to be better. I lean on my team and learn from them. Most importantly, I recognize that I’m still trying to become the manager I’ve always wanted to have.