Anyone have a non paywalled link? Back in the day when we posted and shared links among each other the links would contain… you know… actual content. I miss those days.
Yuck... The event loop idea is cool, but I would rather carve out my own eyeballs than do any of the tasks he has to do as a manager. Management is definitely not for me!
I think the engineering management field is going to drastically change in the next 5 years (probably 2 but industry will be slower to changes in some areas). We are already seeing signs at companies like Twitter and meta.
not my post but i see current USA federal reserve bank rate policy will cause slow painful end to big tech companies empire building policy. the growth religion must stop hiring endless layers of managers and ‘promoting’ good engineer from individual role to manager role. line manager with direct individual contributor report sit in useless meeting all day. zero value. if they not change this..they will die in market slowly and be replaced by new generation of companies.
Coding is a poor use of time given that it runs counter to context switching required of management. If you see someone suggest this you should make that clear. Anyone with a decent amount of experience could help back this point up should you encounter someone trying to push for this.
There's a lot of other things a manager can do outside management but engineering requires too much focus.
There is a push for managers to return to engineering full time in some companies and that's reasonable if there's an imbalance but asking managers to spend 20% of their time keeping their development environment up to date (the only thing you'll get done with the amount of context switching) is immature.
It’s more a review of his recurring meetings which is definitely useful but will probably not get you very far when it comes to solving your time issue.
The real trick is at the end of the article when he talks about shifting from bi-weekly to tri-weekly: stop attending meetings you don’t need to attend, be ruthless with your priorities to focus on what really matters, delegate a lot.
Yeah I read the article and created my own sheet with my own tasks on it, looked at it, and thought, "OK now how do I make this loop?" Sticking the events into a calendar isn't enough; I was somehow thinking that mapping all this out would show how one thing would lead to another and actually create a cycle of growth.
Time management is possibly the easiest part, for me. You end up putting it on your calendar and the calendar will take care of it for you.
The hardest part that I had to learn as an EM was how to identify ways to be effective with small blocks of time, safeguarding my energy, and making sure I (and my team) were working on the most important things.
* Time management - How do I organize my day?
* Activity management - What are the right things to work on?
* Capacity management - How many things can I plan at once?
* Project management - How do I break down my tasks into manageable sizes?
* Task management - How do I focus on an individual task, and what do I do with them?
* Energy management: How do I use my most productive time for the valuable things, and how do I make sure I don’t overextend myself?
* Knowledge management: How do I organize what I’ve learned so that I don’t lose time to trying to search for it in complex projects?
* Habit management -how do I stay on track with the habits I want to adopt or have adopted?
* Vision/goal management - what is my north star? What am I working toward and how do I get there?
There are a lot of people who have written about these topics individually. I think the important part is to identify what you need, and dive into those topics in particular as you build your productivity system.
Thank you for introducing me to Autofocus. It's similar to a technique I've been using for quite some time now and I'm happy to hear that it has a formal name and all that. I decided to write a (very!) short blog about it ( https://legendofcode.com/blog/task-management )
Add PR reviews, unscheduled support, an impossible number of meetings and I was ready to give up. I start my day at 8am and the only time I could do any real work was after 4pm. But then, I have family obligations in the evening.
My solution? Hire senior engineers with lead dev experience. Convince management to pay them well. Then delegate.
In a team of 10, I had two awesome senior dev of this caliber. When the company hired more devs, I told them it was time to restructure the team. You can't realistically have 1 on 1 with 20 people.
I would think that organising your time when you're the manager is a far simpler act than organising your time when you're the managee.
I've lost track of what stage I've left all my important and creative tasks, on account of all the contrived "Urgent action required" emails and "PartyTime" deadlines.
PS: PartyTime is when the party starts at 8, so you tell everyone to come at six, to make sure they're there by seven. Which makes the diligent people come at 5 because they don't want to be late for the 6pm deadline; meanwhile the usual suspects arrive late at 10pm anyway.
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[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 55.4 ms ] threadExciting times for EMs!
managers are expected to have 20+ person teams and spend at least 20% of their time coding
https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/cruel-changes-at-twitter/...
There's a lot of other things a manager can do outside management but engineering requires too much focus.
There is a push for managers to return to engineering full time in some companies and that's reasonable if there's an imbalance but asking managers to spend 20% of their time keeping their development environment up to date (the only thing you'll get done with the amount of context switching) is immature.
They created a schedule, and they call it an "event loop", which is probably the farthest to what an event loop actually is.
The real trick is at the end of the article when he talks about shifting from bi-weekly to tri-weekly: stop attending meetings you don’t need to attend, be ruthless with your priorities to focus on what really matters, delegate a lot.
The hardest part that I had to learn as an EM was how to identify ways to be effective with small blocks of time, safeguarding my energy, and making sure I (and my team) were working on the most important things.
There are a fair number of considerations for productivity. I wrote about this a few weeks back ( https://www.ebiester.com/productivity/2022/12/14/lego-blocks... ) but these are the factors to consider:
There are a lot of people who have written about these topics individually. I think the important part is to identify what you need, and dive into those topics in particular as you build your productivity system.I'd love to read its sequel. Can we subscribe to your blog?
My solution? Hire senior engineers with lead dev experience. Convince management to pay them well. Then delegate.
In a team of 10, I had two awesome senior dev of this caliber. When the company hired more devs, I told them it was time to restructure the team. You can't realistically have 1 on 1 with 20 people.
I've lost track of what stage I've left all my important and creative tasks, on account of all the contrived "Urgent action required" emails and "PartyTime" deadlines.
PS: PartyTime is when the party starts at 8, so you tell everyone to come at six, to make sure they're there by seven. Which makes the diligent people come at 5 because they don't want to be late for the 6pm deadline; meanwhile the usual suspects arrive late at 10pm anyway.