Engineering Management for the Rest of Us

Engineering management requires that you understand power imbalances, people structures, and consider strategies that are outside one particular project.

What life events have the people you work with been through that changed the way they think about things? What can you learn about how they’ve evolved as people by understanding what shaped their values?

Individual values can be related to ethics and what we think is moral. Cultural values can also reflect context that’s greater than an individual, and…

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When you’re misaligned, burnout is inevitable. Working on a team with values that largely align with your own is nice, because you can really dig into the makeup of the culture on your team. Clarity is what we’re aiming for here. Clarity is key.

Here’s an example of values I’ve put forth on my teams: We celebrate everyone’s wins as though they’re our own. No compare and despair. Be empowered to forge forward, we hired you because you’re an expert. Make mistakes. Choose impact over butts in seats (We’re not counting hours here, focus on making an impact and work when and how you want).

I make a list of team values for whatever organization I run. Why do I do this? Because there are certain things I value on my team, things that I don’t necessarily need to convince the entire company are important.

Values provide context to a person’s mental state, needs, and motivations. In practice, understanding the values of your team members becomes a useful tool to evaluate and drive your own empathy. You may have different values, so unless you actively seek to understand another person’s point of view, it’s possible to be bound by your own context and

More often, conflicts are the result of a misalignment of values, and neither person is attempting malice against the other. If their needs aren’t met and they aren’t communicating in a way that someone else with dissimilar values…

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When someone is acting in misalignment with their stated values, this is precisely when to be careful. In his book, Nonviolent Communication, Marshall B. Rosenberg points out that “All criticism, attack, insults, and judgments vanish when we focus attention on hearing the feelings and needs behind a message.”

we should also consider our own values, because they do impact our leadership style. The way you lead a team doesn’t need to be the same as other leaders. It can be tempting to “use someone else’s map,” but ultimately we are each individuals, and we have our own lived experiences, values, and boundaries. It’s important to pay attention to these and