Making The Leap from Individual Contributor to Engineering Manager

This resource first appeared in issue #116 on 02 Apr 2022 and has tags Becoming A Manager: Other

Making The Leap from Individual Contributor to Engineering Manager - Natalie Rothfels & Doa Jafri, Reforge

Speaking of promoting a team member to manager - Rothfels and Jafri talk about the challenges faced by an individual contributor taking on their first management role, and the skills they need to learn. I like their discussion of them, binned into five categories:

Hone concise, clear, context-driven communication (including bridging communities and having tough conversations)
Developing emotional regulation and self-reflection (someone can’t lead others if they’re constantly freaked out)
Learn the craft of facilitation for both technical and non-technical discussions (the job now is to make sure the right conversations happen and go well, not necessarily contribute to the conversations)
Create and maintain strong organizational systems (from #110, you manage processes and lead people)
Shift your mindset around progress, ambiguity, and change. (This is a bit easier for those who have worked around research for a while!)

These are a lot of big skills to learn! New managers or team leads need a lot of support as they go through these changes.