It’s like surfing | Swizec Teller

The weird thing about engineering management is that you feel kinda useless. Yet if you stop, projects stop.

I like to say that senior+ engineers are force multipliers. Having you on the team makes everyone better and more effective. Because true 10x engineers are those who add +0.2x to everyone else. Do that 10 times and you’re a 20x engineer 🤘

Management is that times 100.

It’s not that I don’t code, it’s that on many days I just don’t get to. Yesterday was meetings, code review, and interviews. Important technical work with zero hands-on-keyboard time.

Meetings help you guide direction and help folks build the right thing. That 10min discussion about architecture before the work starts is the single most impactful thing you can do as an experienced engineer.

Point out the rakes before people step on them.

Code review is how you do codebase gardening. You don’t get much time to code, instead you get lots of time to “This is great, but let’s try approach X, Y, Z to avoid obvious-to-me problems A, B, C that we’ll run into next month”. And lots of “Brilliant code! Can we make it simple instead?”.

young grugs need help learn

Interviews … there’s always more work than people isn’t there?

As the manager, you are accountable.

Project not done? Your fault. Production breaks? Your fault. People confused not sure what to work on? Your fault. Confused about priorities from leadership? Your fault. Too much work not enough staff? Your fault. Skill issue? Your fault.

And when things go great? Your team gets the praise! Look at them go. Wow amazing work so cool great rockstars 🤩

Yes you touched and guided every project, gardened a good architecture with the right questions, connected people to the right stakeholders, sniffed out hidden requirements, reviewed every PR, pointed out all the rakes, and raced ahead to prepare the sandbox with appropriate scoping for everyone to feel effective.

But you didn’t do the work. No kudos for you.

In a way it feels like surfing.

You’re a bit ahead of the wave, mostly out of control, guiding where the work takes you. You don’t have time to understand all the details. Just gotta trust your folks to figure those out and ask you questions when they get stuck.

And sometimes you gotta let them step on a rake. Swords aren’t meant to be safe.

Cheers,
~Swizec