[Taro Classic] How To Find A Great Engineering Manager
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Your tech career lives or dies on the following 2 things:
- The quality of the engineering managers you work for
- Your ability to maintain a healthy relationship with those engineering managers
Of course, there are many other aspects that go into software engineer success like coding ability and communication, but the engineer <-> manager dynamic absolutely dwarfs everything else in terms of importance. You can get everything else right, but if you have a bad manager, it's effectively impossible for you to make any real career progress.
That's what this course is here to help you with. Together, we will deep dive into the entire world of engineering management, giving you all the wisdom you need to navigate it properly as an engineer. After going through this course, you will:
- 🏆 Know what it actually means to be a great engineering manager
- ⚠️ Understand why the vast majority of engineering managers are terrible
- 🧠 See the difference in how top tech companies handle engineering management differently from everyone else
- 🛠️ Be well equipped with tactics to navigate negative manager scenarios
- 🔍 Have a concrete strategy to vet potential engineering managers to see if they truly care about the health and growth of their reports
Too many engineers chase trendy tech trends and flashy brand names above all else, landing themselves in toxic teams (yes, even FAANG is filled with these). When it comes to job selection, people is key, and the engineering manager is the most important person of all.
As tech leads and managers at some of the world's best tech companies, Alex Chiou and Rahul Pandey know what it takes to be a truly great leader. Both of them have seen both sides of the table:
- As an engineer, how do you find a good manager and synergize with them optimally?
- As a leader and mentor, how do you foster great engineering talent?
Alex Chiou: Across the first 7 years of his career, Alex had a whopping 11 managers. While this was certainly thrashy, it made Alex really understand what makes a great manager, what makes an average manager, and what makes a terrible one. Most of Alex's career progression came in the latter half of his career, and a big factor behind this is quite simple - He learned how to identify high-quality managers and avoid the low-quality ones.
Rahul Pandey: As someone who's gotten consistently excellent performance review ratings (including a Top 5% rating at Meta which got him a discretionary equity [DE] award), Rahul knows what it takes to forge a powerful relationship with your engineering manager. He even went to the other side during his time at Meta, becoming a tech lead manager (TLM).
