Help: I Didn’t Realize I Was a Manager Now!

QCon London 2024

Session Engineering Management

Help: I Didn’t Realize I Was a Manager Now!

Monday Apr 8 / 10:35AM BST, Whittle (3rd Fl.)

Abstract

The highest performing companies in every industry, like Apple, adhere to the principle of Experts leading Experts. As Apple says "it's easier to train an expert to manage well than to train a manager to be an expert".

As engineers we're used to acquiring new technical skills and our ability to do that is probably what got us into our managerial position. But what about all this "manager" stuff we are now expected to do? Performance management, organizational design, coaching and mentoring, influencing and persuading. How do we become good at that? And do we even want to?

After leading over 250 engineers across the world and coaching and mentoring people at many different stages of their leadership journey, I have learned that many engineers who take on leadership roles feel the expectations of management are unclear and ill defined. I want to help people on the journey to understand how they can grow to become a great engineering manager. And why it's critical that we remove the obstacles and enable today's engineers to grow into tomorrow's empowered engineering leaders.

Topics

Engineering Management leadership Personal Growth
76% senior dev or higher
1:11 speaker ratio
60+ practitioners

QCon London 2024 is a three day conference for senior software engineers, architects and team leads. An international program committee of working engineers selects every session. Patterns and practices, not products and pitches.

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