It’s a great time to be in software engineering management. The field is finally mature, with people everywhere realizing its potential in every area of business — and life — for that matter! But that doesn’t mean you can slink by with just the bare minimum skills required as a manager.
Whether you’re looking to land a new management role or trying to brush up to keep your skill set current, it’s important to know what’s required right now for engineering managers — as well as for the near future.
Already an engineering manager and want to step up your game within your company? Here’s how to be the engineering manager your company needs.
Today, we’ll run through what tech skills and soft skills are necessary for engineering managers. Feel free to use this as a starting point for your learning process!
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Up-to-Date Knowledge of Software Technologies
An up-to-date knowledge means being well-versed in your languages, frameworks, cloud services, toolkits, methodologies, etc. As a manager, you don’t necessarily need to know the inner workings of each, but you’ll need to be aware of what’s applicable for which situation, and what each of their downfalls are.
It’ll often be your architects and senior software developers giving their informed opinions on which toolchain and stack are best for which application.
However, it’s good practice to be able to evaluate their choices to some degree, instead of going in with blind acceptance. This way, you know the benefits and risks of choosing a particular technology, particularly as it relates to time and cost estimates.
For those not currently up to date, it’s time you start reading up and following the best online dev communities. Hit subscribe to JavaScript, Angular, programming, AI, data science… whatever catches your interest. Browse these community posts in the morning with your coffee, instead of doom-scrolling through Insta or Facebook, and you’ll find yourself absorbing helpful new knowledge in no time.
Read More: Ready to Take On a Senior Role or Leadership Position as a Developer?
Know How to Read the Code Your Team is Writing
There are plenty of engineering managers out there who haven’t coded a line in years. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. However, not having proficient enough or up-to-date coding skills to appraise your team’s work is a deal-breaker.
Consider this: if you wanted to apply for a new engineering management role, where your team works mainly in Ruby and you haven’t played around with it in years, you may well be out of your depth.
Cross-ecosystem/language/paradigm managers (or those that have slipped with their skills!) looking to keep up with what skills are needed should brush up on their relevant coding knowledge, including newer and more popular coding languages, frameworks, and libraries you might not have played around with before. (Also know how to list those programming languages on your CV correctly!)
This way your team members will be able to trust your judgment when it comes to their output. For developers, there’s nothing worse than a hefty dose of praise on a project where you know the underlying code is held together with hacks and a prayer.
Effective Communication Skills & Interpersonal Skills
You can’t improve your leadership skills without also working on your ability to communicate.
This is a standard requirement for any management role. However, it’s particularly relevant in the software engineering field, where soft skills usually take a backseat to technical skills. Both hard and soft skills are important.
Do you really want to be in a role heavily weighted towards people skills, or do you actually love programming?
For some senior software engineers who go into engineering management positions, they try it out for a while and realize that, actually, they prefer having a workload that’s more highly weighted towards the tech side.
Knowing what you like doing is just as important as being able to succeed in it!
Are your people skills polished enough to be a good manager?
As a junior developer, I noticed two distinct types of managers in my rise up the ranks.
First, there was the “people person manager.” This type of manager stopped by the office, checked in for a chat, caught up with his or her team’s work and social life, and elicited updates on progress naturally.
This type of manager was well in tune with their project management tools and responsibilities (software and otherwise), always open to suggestions on the best way forward for a project, and was as comfortable communicating with stakeholders as they were with developers. They often were great engineers and excellent coordinators.
Then there was what I’ll call the “developer-manager.” Generally, this was a typical senior engineer who completed management courses and was actively trying to be a people person. They’d be brilliant at coding and pointing the team towards technical solutions we never thought of, but not the strongest at generating team buzz or effectively communicating project context outside of our little bubble.
While the work always got done, it didn’t foster an ideal team environment and cohesiveness — it was simply going through the motions. There wasn’t a smooth flow of information through stakeholders down to developers and the other way around, and team collaboration wasn’t as effective.
The team needs to be able to trust in your ability to manage, in your ability to communicate effectively and fluidly with everyone. You can work on your communication skills by reading books like How to Win Friends and Influence People, listening to podcasts, attending your local Toastmasters group, and practicing what you learn both socially and at work.
Oh, and don’t forget cross-cultural communication skills, as well, especially on remote or distributed engineering teams!
Read More: Here’s When You Can TRULY Call Yourself a “Senior” Software Engineer
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Agile Management Experience
According to the 2021 State of Agile Report by Digital.ai, agile adoption within software development teams has reached an all-time high at 86%, which is up from 37% the year before (likely due to the pandemic).
Agile is becoming both pervasive and mature within organizations. The intersection of agile and DevOps is particularly important in management roles, so it’s important that you bone up.
The agile approach focuses on intra- and inter-team communication and flow of artifacts, continuous development and testing, automation across activities, and other various directives.
Different team activities no longer exist in a vacuum in large, discrete chunks, as was practiced in the Waterfall model of software development, but are broken up and continually built upon.
This makes software less error-prone (from continuous testing), easier to release (from a minimum viable product), less manual (with the right DevOps configuration) and thus less personnel-resource heavy, and less susceptible to schedule blowouts (and smaller activities are defined).
As an agile engineering manager, you’ll need to outline expectations, have faith that your team will be self-organizing, remove impediments to their success, offer support and assistance where necessary, and solicit estimations of time/resources need for them to do their job. If you have hired well, then your agile team, with the right tools and agile practices in place, should be a success.
Picking up agile is particularly relevant if you are an engineering manager with just a little or no agile experience. If this sounds like you, then do know that there are options open to you.
Grow your skillset by taking an agile management course or engage the services of a mentor to help build your knowledge before starting the job application cycle.
Deep Understanding Of and Belief In the Engineering Processes, Product & Vision
Looking to apply for a new role? You’ll need to ask yourself whether the company’s engineering processes, product, and vision resonate with you.
How you feel about the company and your ability to spearhead project success is going to be a huge determinant in how well you do and how long you stay in the role.
Not only is this going to be important for the company hiring you, it’s also important for you to take into consideration unless you’re just looking into a short-term engagement as a stepping stone.
Are their engineering processes in line with your standards?
Learn more about their current engineering processes. Ask questions, poke around. Does it sound like they know what they are doing? Do they have sound DevOps systems, development style guides, well-kept version control, compulsory documentation, and solid testing practices in place?
While it might be up to you to implement some new practices, you don’t want to step into a workplace that has spaghetti code, mismanaged backups, and has so far just got by on a wing and a prayer.
Are you actually interested in and knowledgeable about the projects you’ll be working on?
Ensure you have a deep knowledge of the space the company is working within, as well as the scope of the project/s you will be working on.
There is no point in jumping in on a project that sounds as if it would bore you to tears — because it’ll probably end up doing just that. If you jump into a role without that deep understanding of product and vision, you’re taking a huge risk in hoping you’ll be a match, instead of evaluating if you think it’ll be a good fit first.
Does the company vision match your own career philosophy?
Take a look at the company, its values, brand voice, internal culture, and how they interact with the wider community. Does it sound like it matches your own career philosophy? Will this role energize you and propel success?
If you are out of work, it can be tempting to want to pick up any role. However, if you have the means, or can take on casual/external/temp work in the meantime, it’s better to carefully evaluate whether the company, product, and engineering processes will be a match for you.
Read More: How To Use Social Media Thought Leadership To Level Up Your Developer Career
A Final Note
Don’t be afraid if you aren’t perfect!
Not all engineering managers are going to be excellent in every one of these areas. However, you can always make improvements by practicing, doing courses, reading, and talking to other professionals in the area.
If you are looking to move into a new role and the company can see that you’re a great fit in a majority of these areas, and are willing to put the time and resources into helping you develop in others, then they are likely to hire you anyway.
If you think the company and role are perfect for you but you’re lacking a little in a given area, apply anyway, outline your weakness, and see where the road takes you.
If you feel like your skills aren’t up-to-date, you could always consider a side-step, too. Have you considered an analyst role? Software architect? Technical writing? You might find a change is good as a rest.
Did we miss any key skills that software engineering managers should have? Let us know in the comments section below, and thanks for reading!
