Maintain Your Technical Edge As An Engineering Manager

Real world strategy.

Author

Jakub Chodounsky
November 25, 2024

The article challenges traditional advice for engineering managers to maintain technical skills through hands-on coding and side projects, arguing that such approaches are often impractical due to demanding schedules. Instead, it suggests a more realistic approach where EMs can stay technically sharp by guiding their teams through experimental projects, learning from diverse team experiences, and teaching others, all while maintaining a healthy work-life balance.

Universal-2 tackles real-world challenges in conversational data: pinpointing speaker names, capturing key moments, and transcribing complex phrases like “Q4 revenue target is $3M.” With seamless integration, it powers meeting summaries, CRM updates, sales tools and more—delivering structured, accurate insights from millions of minutes of audio.

That persistent feeling of being a fraud hits hard when stepping into engineering management. It's not just about doubting your abilities anymore - suddenly you're responsible for other people's careers while trying to figure out your new role. Let's look at how to handle it.

An Engineering Manager Challenge
9 minutes by Ted Neward

What would you do if you had to make the choice here? The article discusses a technical leadership dilemma: choosing between hiring one senior full-stack developer or two junior developers when a team is stretched thin. The author argues that the decision should be based on ROI calculations in terms of time and effort, rather than money.

Wes presents a framework that includes using the "even more" technique (suggesting improvements to existing practices rather than pointing out failures), speaking from personal experience, adopting diplomatic language, and supporting recommendations with concrete examples. The advice emphasizes maintaining respect while being effective, avoiding both overly submissive and confrontational approaches.

How to get more headcount
4 minutes by Will Larson

When teams face challenges with headcount or project approvals, it's often due to misalignment with executives on fundamental issues rather than poor executive understanding. To resolve these conflicts, teams should ensure alignment on three key areas before discussing specific requests: agreement on the problem to be solved, consensus on the general approach to solving it, and evidence of the team's current execution quality.

Is manual testing slowing down your releases? BrowserStack Low Code Automation empowers everyone on your team to create automated tests in under 3 minutes—no coding required. Its AI-driven tests adapt to app updates and reduce failures by up to 40%, so you can accelerate testing, boost productivity, and focus on delivering quality software faster. Start testing smarter today!

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