As I started my career in engineering management in a startup, I often wondered how it’s done in a bigger tech company. After going through several interviews for an engineering manager role, I noticed a theme in the qualities/experiences sought after by bigger companies. In this blog post, I will examine this theme and hopefully create a clearer idea of what bigger companies are looking for in an engineering manager.
Engineering Foundation
To be an engineering manager, we need to be engineers ourselves. We could have different backgrounds in different disciplines, but the expectation is to help other engineers achieve objectives. This help comes in terms of mentoring/coaching other engineers and assisting in system designs.
This attribute is tested through behavioral questions such as “how do you mentor junior/staff engineers?“. The system design knowledge is tested in a separate system design interview where we design a system with specific goals and constraints, for instance, “create an image storage system that can scale globally”. The details are usually vague and it is on us to figure it out. When we ask clarifying questions, it lets the interviewers know about our experience and the scale of which we think in.
People Management
People management is seen to be one of the most important aspects of the job. Managing engineers is tricky, as it requires both engineering skills and people skills.
One of the questions that came up frequently was how to manage low performers. This is an important aspect of engineering management because, at a bigger scale, we need to know what to do and make hard decisions when it comes to performance management.
Project Management
As a manager, being able to deliver projects is the most visible way for us to contribute value to the team/company. The more projects we’ve run, the more experience we have to deliver future projects.
Many questions came in the form of past project management experience and how we dealt with things going wrong in a project. This lets the interviewers know how we act under pressure when a project gets off-track.
An example of a question is how we communicate with stakeholders when we know the project will be late and what we do about it.
Product Management
It helps to have a solid understanding of the product our team develops. If we like the product/software/platform, that is even better. We can also help contribute to the development side of the product.
Innovation and business/tech acumen are valued as we are the one leading the charge. Decisions need to be made with various degrees of uncertainty, and the more experience or knowledge we have on the matter, the easier we can make those decisions.
I got stumped on the question that asked about the last innovative idea that I implemented. There were also questions such as “How do you decide which features to implement first? How do you determine the values that you can bring to your customers?”
Summary
Through my interviews for an engineering manager role, I have learned that there are 4 main areas to focus on. To be an effective engineering manager, we need to be competent in engineering, people management, project management, and product management. How much experience we need for each area will depend on the company size and the type of work expected of the role. It will be prudent to start honing our skills in these areas and keep track of them for future reference.