A Story

Not so long ago, in the previous company I worked with, I was promoted to be a Lead Software Engineer, whatever that means, but in this role, I feel like I just another engineer with a bit more seniority. The role was meant to be a people manager. I did a performance review to my subordinate and we do 1-1 (not so frequent tho), but my managerial skills do not develop/utilize that much, which not so surprising because the company was small (under 50 employees) and not so much hierarchy and process set in place.

Then when the opportunity came to me for a similar role in a bigger company (500+ employees), I accepted it and next thing I know, it's hard, seriously it's hard. In the previous role, we are only a 3-person team including me and 2 team members. Because it was a promotion, it feels like I still their friends, and I never use my "manager" power to enforce anything. And because the team was small and flat, my team has pretty much information as I have, well sometimes I have more but I feel like natural. Now, I enter a new company, join a new team directly as a lead and manager for them, it is a quite a challenge because I need to blend with them as well as help them as a manager and the team is quite big, it is a 5-person team including me, 2 seniors and 2 entry-level engineers.

In this article, I want to share two things that I think might be interesting for you a first-time tech manager like me. First, I want to share my struggle in balancing between tech-contributions and management-contributions. Second, I want to share about framework that I learned recently in the Managing as Coach Course on Coursera as part of the Coaching Skills for Managers Specialization. The framework share five roles we're playing when we become a manager.

Balancing Tech & Management

I don't know if it's only in Indonesia, but a Lead Software Engineer or famously called Tech Lead usually implies that a person is a respected person in the team in terms of technical expertise, and at the same time also a manager for the engineers below her/him. Here's my key take away.

You'll likely get a lot of tasks to finish, so manage yourself first

When I join this new company as a Tech Lead, I found myself behind, I feel like there's a lot of tasks to be done, the system is also new to me, the engineer looks at me when they have problems, management expects a lot of things from me. I feel like an impostor myself (another discussion for another article).

My journey as a tech lead is more complicated since I also managed a team who build kulkul.tech — a company I founded to help companies around the world build product and software development processes. Having that said, it common for me to have a lot of tasks in a day. If you still question why we need to manage ourselves, I highly recommend you read this book by Peter Drucker called Managing Oneself.

First of all, since I only a single-threaded person (like node.js) lots of work eventually be done sequentially. So I need a system to make me efficient and stay on top of my work. One of the problems I have is I often forget tasks I have. I've tried a kanban board to manage my tasks, I tried Habitica, I tried simple note-taking, but I eventually lose track of my notes. I figured out that the system that works for me is a system that tolerant of chaos and disorganized nature of my mind.

I finally find this little tools called Todoist. It is a paid app, but it's cheap considering how game-changing it is to my work. It's only $3 per month, cheaper than the coffee I drink every other day. The good thing about this app is it provides a lot of entry points to enter a todo, from a web app, chrome extension, GMail extension, mobile apps, and many others. The idea is to make sure that all of the works we need to be done are ingested to the Todoist which then Todoist has a simple but yet powerful way to set where it should be done. For each task I have, I can set whether it should be done now or it can be done later. Following the Eisenhower Matrix framework, I can easily decide what to do.

The other thing I want to point out here is that everyone is unique, so the method I took here might not work as well in your situation. You might need to take this survey to get what is the best method to stay on top of your work by Todoist team here.

Maker's Time vs. Manager's Time

The subject of maker vs. manager mode is a long discussion that has been discussed by various experts. One of them is the great Paul Graham. The idea is that makers like software engineers or designers work in different modes compare to managers. Maker gets things done through their mind and hands and creates valuable work whether it is software, a design, or a technical document. However the manager works differently, managers get things done by communicating with their team, whether it is a product discussion, mentoring with my employee, and many others. One of the tricks I've implemented to handle this issue is by color-coding my calendar. For example orange for management work and blue for a creative work like coding.

Taken from brightgauge.com

Align with your product team

If your situation is similar to me, you might find it useful to have close collaboration with the product team to make sure that your work is still aligned with your team and product goal and not blindly finishing tasks from your productivity tools. Continuously re-evaluating your task is important since things that relevant yesterday might not relevant today.

5 roles managers are expected to play

Five roles manager expected to play, from the Managing as Coach Course on Coursera

Not enough balancing between manager and maker mode, as manager there're a lot of roles that manager expected to play, there are coach, leader, manager, mentor, and trainer. Each has its strength and can be dangerous if overused. We need to balance between roles and if we overuse, we'll be imposed on a man with a hammer syndrome.

"As a friend said, to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

Coach

As coach, manager expected to develop their emplouyees to get better results and performance. We can't ask our employee to figure it out and get it done. We need to coach them. Other than that employees expect managers to help them bcause the environments and skills are ever-changing today.

If overuse: Always see gaps on employees knowledge..

Leader

As leader, manager sets and defines the vision of the team and establish clear outcomes and results and shos the team members how to contribute to the end goal.

If overuse: Poor implementation.

Manager

As manager, manager practice and implement policies and procedures; Mitigates organizational risk; Drives productivity and esures goals are met; Leaders set the vision and managers deploy it. Similar to what composer and conductor done in orchestra. Composer is leading and set goals and conductor make sure the resulted music is in harmony. Manager's job is too look at every player, see how well they're contributing and how to improve performance. There's a time and place for the manager role, and it isn't all the time.

If overuse: Micromanagement.

Mentor

As mentor, manager advises employees based on personal and professional experience and expertise. Mentor give the employee opportunity to try/test out idea before executing it and lern from their mentor's challenges and mistakes.

If overuse: Overtelling.

Trainer

As trainer, manager teach employees on the job on the weak are of the employee. Manager doesn't need to be the one who teach it, but she/he should make sure there's enough training for their employees.

If overuse: Overtelling.

Hope you enjoy the article, leave your feedback in the comment seaction below.

About Me 😄

I'm Abdurrachman and currently, I'm managing a software development agency called Kulkul.tech. We're a web and mobile software development company providing excellent software for business. We're working with companies all over the world from a single-person business to large corporates. We are a solid remote-first firm with a high emphasis on people and clear communication.

We begin each project with understanding the client's business and problem then provide a contextual solution and applicable technology. We make sure that cooperation with us develops the business of our client.

We provide excellent engineers and designers to deliver a complete product from spec gathering, product road mapping, UI/UX design, development, QA, and DevOps.
We're experts in the following technologies:

• JavaScript and Node.js
• Python and Django
• Ruby on Rails,
• Mobile (iOS and Android) especially Flutter
• DB: MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB,
• Frontend: Elm, React, Angular

We working in Codementor too, please reach me in Codementor if you're interested.