The Manager’s Path by Camille Fournier

Last week I finished reading The Manager’s Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change by Camille Fournier. This is a must-have book for any software engineering manager and a great book for anyone who is even remotely involved with software engineering in any capacity. I liked the book so much that I immediately ordered her other book from Amazon 97 Things Every Engineering Manager Should Know: Collective Wisdom from the Experts. I also listened to all her talks in youtube as much as I could find. It’s not that she is an excellent writer but her content is very relevant to what we face as engineering leaders over the span of our careers.

Here is my key take aways from this book.

What to expect from a manager -

• One-on-one meetings
• Feedback and workplace guidance
• Training and career growth
• Good communication
• Debugging dysfunctions of a team

How to be managed -

• Spend time thinking about what you want
• You are responsible for yourself
• Give your manager a break — he/she is a human and will make mistakes
• Choose your manager wisely

Mentorship -

The Alpha Geek -

• Driven to be the best engineer
• Values intelligence and technical skills
• Sometimes takes credit for all of the team’s work
• Absolutely terrible managers, so don’t make them managers

Tech Leads may come out of different roles like systems architect, business analyst , project planner, software developer and team leader. A tech lead -

• Understands the architecture
• Good communicator
• Good team player
• Continues to write code
• Leads technical decisions
• Provides mentorship and guidance to the team members

Project Management -

• Break down the work
• Push through the details and the unknowns
• Run the project and adjust the plan as you go
• User the insights gained in the planning process to manage requirements changes
• Revisit the details as you get close to completion

There is usually a decision point for engineers at their career to either move into management or stay in technical track. Some new managers may become Process Czar. But they need to be reminded of Agile Manifesto -

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan

Managing People -

Managing A Team -

• Staying technical
• Act as shield (i.e. bullshit umbrella)
• Manage conflicts -
• don’t rely exclusively on consensus or voting
• do set up clear processes to depersonalize decisions
• don’t turn a blind eye to simmering issues
• do address issues without courting drama
• don’t take it out on other teams
• do remember to be kind
• don’t be afraid
• do get curious

Managing Multiple Teams -

Managing Managers -

• Similar expectations as managing multiple teams
• Skip-level meetings
• The fallacy of the open-door policy
• Debugging dysfunctional organizations -
• managing teams is a series of complex black boxes interacting with other complex black boxes
• have a hypothesis
• check the data
• observe the team
• ask questions
• check the team dynamics
• jump in to help
• be curious
• Staying technically relevant -
• oversee technical investment
• ask informed questions
• analyze and explain engineering and business tradeoffs
• make specific requests
• use your experience as a gut check, read the code if needed
• pick and unknown area, and ask an engineer to explain it to you
• attend postmortems
• keep up with industry trends in software development processes
• foster a network of technical people outside of your company
• never stop learning

The Big Leagues -

Bootstrapping Culture -

• Applying core values
• Creating cultural policy
• Writing a career ladder -
• solicit participation from your team
• look for examples
• be detailed
• use both long-term descriptions and summaries
• consider how the ladder relates to salary
• provide many early opportunities for advancement
• use narrow salary bands for early-career stages
• use wide salary bands when and where you have fewer levels
• consider your breakpoint levels — up or out, senior engineer level
• recognize achievement
• split management and technical tracks
• consider making people management skills a mid-career requirement
• years of experience
• don’t be afraid to evolve over time
• Cross-Functional teams
• Developing engineering processes, depersonalize decision making -

I am a Java programmer currently working for Salesforce.com in San Francisco, California, USA. I finished my MSS in Economics from University of Dhaka, Bangladesh and two years Software Engineering Diploma from NIIT. After working for more than 4 years in various outsourcing and local projects back in Bangladesh, I came to USA on H1B visa at early 2005. Other than my passion for computer, internet and online community, I am a passionate chess player with my current USCF chess rating of 2022. In USCF terms I am a Candidate Master or Expert. I have also picked up hiking as a hobby lately. I love to travel around, read books and write blogs. Read my IT thoughts at https://ashikuzzaman.wordpress.com, online diary of regular events at http://ashikuzzaman.blogspot.com and chess endeavors at http://dragonbishop.blogspot.com . View all posts by ashikuzzaman

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Originally published at http://ashikuzzaman.wordpress.com on April 20, 2020.