You’ve probably heard this canard: “Engineers do the technical work, managers do the people work.” I hate it. ☺️ I think it misconstrues the fundamental nature of sociotechnical systems. The “socio” and “technical” of sociotechnical systems are not neatly separable, they are interwoven and interdependent. There is actually precious little that is purely technical work or purely people work; there is a metric shitload of glue work that draws upon both skill sets.
Consider a very partial list of tasks done by any functional engineering org, besides writing code:
- Recruiting, networking, interviewing, training interviewers, synthesizing feedback, writing job descriptions and career ladders
- Project management for each project or commitment, prioritizing backlog, managing stakeholders and resolving conflicts, estimating size and scope, running retrospectives
- Running team meetings, having 1x1s, giving continuous growth feedback, writing reviews, representing the team’s needs
- Architecture, code review, refactoring; capturing DORA and productivity metrics, managing alert volume to prevent burnout
Headers and contents:
- Why does hierarchy exist in organizations?
- Hierarchy is a property of self-organizing systems
- The false binary of sociotechnical systems
- Engineering managers are a useful abstraction
- Manager calendars vs maker calendars
- Management is a tool for accountability
- Choose Boring technology Culture
- More lines of code != more productivity
- Are managers ever unnecessary overhead?