3 Years into Engineering Management

So I have recently completed 3 years into the Engineering Management role at AgroStar

I have built a team of 6 engineers from scratch. Have lead building multiple products that are now significantly contributing to the business and revenue of the org and set technical strategy for the function; meanwhile also leading one of the happiest teams in the org, with zero voluntary attrition! So I would call the journey so far a "success".

Here I am sharing some thoughts about my journey and learnings. I am especially covering what worked well, and things I did differently.

How did I start?

Back in end of 2021, I was the only senior engineer (SDE-3) for UI engineering function, with one more younger engineering reporting to me (just a team of 2!)

But,

The small group had delivered one of the novel products in Agri-tech e-learning sector.
Group had developed a soon to be one of the most revenue contributing product in the org, with surprisingly exceptional speed and quality.
The web stack (and its integration with android via JS bridge) (as compared to native) had brought much needed speed of iteration in the consumer products domain.

Both was built on top of a new web stack, and general guiding principles towards agility, driven by me.

Retrospectively, this success lead to our org believing the need of significant investment into building (web) UI engineering function. As a result, I got promoted as a Engineering Manager to do the same!

So this is a journey of a strong individual contributor/ product builder into the domain of engineering management.

Beginning

While going into the role, I instinctively knew that this is different than the usual product-building/ individual contribution role. The question was "how".

In the hindsight, my strongest point was - I have a strong interest in growing individuals around me. But engineering management has to be more than that, right?

The senior roles like this are generally not well defined, you need to figure out what needs to be done.

So with the goal of building a world class UI engineering team, I started doing these

Defining the vision & mission, to answer "why" I am doing what I am doing - building a UI engineering team at AgroStar.
Setting General Technical Direction - what tech stack? why? (or why not?) what should be the general practices? processes?

As I was already working as an SDE-3, I did have advantage of having most of the technical direction already defined by myself.

What I believe I needed to do was -

Building a world class team of engineers who can build high quality consumer products.
Creating sustainable systems, processes, and practices to perpetually keep doing the same.
Creating an high trust, nurturing environment in which people can be successful.

What's next? building the team!

Building The Team

As an Engineering Manager, your investment in team building is one of the highest impact activity you can do in the long term, a well built team is a gift that keeps giving over time!

Building a team is much more than just hiring though. This is what I believe it involves -

Involving into hiring - I believe a strong EM partnership with recruiters make wonders! Depending upon the group, this could mean, writing job descriptions, promoting the same into your circles conducting interviews and evaluations. Retrospectively, hiring for a good culture fit has always worked well for us!
Onboarding process - You need to define the onboarding & induction process at the team level, and motivate team members to actively mentor the new members! What has worked really well - a two mentor system, one is me (manager), and another is (buddy); and a written document/ communication on what are the steps for onboarding.
Team & Individual Growth plan - 6 months into the team, you already instinctively know the capabilities of the individuals. I think it is fair to say that you need to create a 3-year career plan for anyone who is reporting to you! You can take inputs from the individual, and assume certain parameters. What worked well - choosing the right individuals to be the "extended leaders" in the group, and grooming them for the same! Also, setting individual goals and responsibilities in an important part of this.
Learning & Development focus - Going beyond day-to-day learning on the job, we run dedicated programs like engineering readers club that promoted continuous learning as a habit, continues to benefit us everyday!
Team Building Events - beyond a typical "engagement activity", something like a "value connect", "life line", "peer connect" made team members bond with each other really well.
Celebrations - Having those event based celebrations, beyond typically how your org/ HR team plans, is important. We celebrate work anniversaries, major achievements, and releases, and sometimes birthdays! This has worked really well for us!

Document! Document! Document!

Beyond team building, there is a need for organizing day-to-day activities -- I believe as an EM, you should not just "execute" those activities, but document the essence, create processes around it, and delegate as much as possible. So, over 3 years I have extensively written these kinds of documents that our team refers to for day-to-day work

"How to Work with Vishwajeet" - it starts with YOU! Understand yourself well, what works, what does not work, and write a manual for working with you for others.
"Engineering Team Working Style Guide" - this includes principles and practices which our team users for day to day work as well as strategic planning
"Engineering Career Framework" - A well defined framework for your group, with various roles, definitions, and expectations.
"Guidelines for building products with XYZ Stack" - These are stack specific guidelines, along with some general building philosophies. Goes far beyond coding guidelines.

Delivery Management - A.k.a. "Getting Things Done!"

This has been surprisingly easier part, most probably because emphasis on doing everything else right, and overall organizational work culture. For the major product group that I lead, we found a leaner approach, in contrast with traditional sprint planning, more like a "kanban" model to be efficient. Keeping it simple, getting prioritization right, and trusting engineers to do their best work has worked out really well. No fancy planning meetings, neither concepts like story points have been as effective as keeping it simple and keeping on delivering!

Beyond Building & Team Management

Team building is a strong foundation - you can go far beyond just that, given enough time!

3 Years gave me plenty of opportunities to go beyond! -

Evaluating industry trends and bringing what works best for the team - you can be the compass for the team, navigating through the stacks, and figuring out what would work well.
Continuous Technical Enhancements - Team owned tech backlog and technical improvement plan - this goes hand-in-hand with product roadmap.
Influencing Product - As a UI group leader, my questions in typical grooming sessions are beyond just "what needs to be built", but "why", and "can we do this instead", in terms of providing the right UX for the customers. Yes, You can be the voice for the better UX and product decisions. We have instilled these values in the individual members as well.
Influencing Rest of The Org - when you really believe what you are doing, and put your heart to it, especially when you are doing things differently and that results into a differential outcome, teams around you start noticing it, and some of the practices start influencing their work in a positive way! This is very satisfying to see! "The roots of the tree we have planted are now nurturing the entire ecosystem"!
Customer, stakeholder, business connect - I have done some field visits and attended customer events/conferences to understand how they are using our product, that serves as an input to what we are building. Doing periodic 1:1 catchups with internal stakeholders work wonders - gives you understanding of how your work is impacting. Your team having a very high trust from the business is the best thing to happen!
Influencing Industry by creating virtuous cycle! - If I invest in nurturing individuals with right values and them having best experience while doing so, would create a perpetual "pay-it-forward" cycle in the industry! I already see this happening, the individuals I had mentored, are becoming really good mentors themselves!

Retrospectively, what worked well over last 3 years -

Ask "is there a better way to do this" and then do it! As a leader you are the one who can define the practices! If something does not work, you don't need to just keep following it for the sake of following. This does not need to be a sudden departure from what you currently do, it should be a gradual path towards Your vision of how things should be.
Putting people first! This is a very basic principle - the team you have is your treasure, treat it like one! Be kind and generous. Processes and systems are there to make people's lives easier, not difficult! Create a high trust culture, and environment in which people can be successful, and then give them freedom to be successful.
Be Proud of What You Do, and Celebrate! - If you are proud of your work, the energy you bring create waves in the entire org around you! (You never get tired of celebrations!)

This is the most satisfying role I have had in my 9+ years of career! When you start sowing the seeds of the things you strongly believe in, and start seeing the results of it in the longer run (that is 3 years+ span), nothing makes you happier than this!

Sharing some of the visualizations that capture last 3 years!