How technical should an engineering manager be
The first word in “engineering manager” is “engineering”!
Intro
Through many fails and wins, I’ve experienced a lot of different things both as an engineer working as an individual contributor, and as a manager.
As much as I would be happy to be dedicating 100% of my time to contributing with code, I’ve taken the route to focus more on management and become the glue between business and technology.
The transition to management would be a lot harder if I didn’t have a good background and understanding of engineering concepts and what it takes to successfully develop a certain feature/project/product.
Let’s take a look at why the background of individual contribution helped.
To be or not to be technical?
To answer the question above, it’s important to outline what responsibilities are part of being an engineering manager.
Depending on the team size and what skillset the team has, I like to always state that the engineering manager should be a person that will be able to help the team to be successful.
Unblock the team with communication or delegation,…