How to fail as a new engineering manager
One thing I think this misses that is REALLY worth knowing as a new engineering manager: you might not want to be an engineering manager. People often view it as a seniority step or a power step or a salary step, but there are three things that go on- especially at large organisations:<p>1. You have no power. You really don&#x27;t have the freedom to change salaries, you don&#x27;t have final say on promotions, you often don&#x27;t have final say on work commitments, often a lot of work needs to be done that simply isn&#x27;t exciting. It&#x27;s a killer to have a development plan for someone that&#x27;s totally un-acheivable because that&#x27;s simply not what your team does.<p>2. You are the shit shield for your team. Especially working in a remote site decisions will be made that totally screw your team and you&#x27;re responsible to deal with that. Whether it be other teams breaking fundamental dependencies, or senior management forgetting why your team exists and deciding it can be cut, re-assigned, re-prioritized. Often being the person who gets the brunt of that is incredibly difficult to deal with.<p>3. Your job is now 100% political. Whether it&#x27;s the expectations your team puts on you to deliver them pay rises at the end of the year, or your product manager putting expectations on you to deliver releases at certain times a lot of what you&#x27;re doing is politics. Especially in large organisations there&#x27;ll be projects that are going to fail, and learning how to protect your team from the fallout is essential. It&#x27;s a shit part of the job but in large organisations it&#x27;s essential.