I was shocked at how obvious my mistakes as an engineer became after my perspective changed. Taking on manager responsibilities for the first time revealed mistakes I had made as an engineer. Here are the top three things I could only see after becoming a manager.
Soft skills are incredibly important, but so is understanding that not everyone handles "social events" well - as a manager I recognise that members of my team have varying levels of ability to endure social interactions, and use that knowledge to help them on their journey, without overwhelming them
One thing I learnt is that no matter who the engineer is they love to have someone to listen to about their work, so that is 1 to 1 socialization I do as a junior engineer.
One mistake I made that I don't make now that I became a business owner is that you always need to ask yourself -- does what I'm doing generate sales and profits or not. Otherwise, why am I doing it in the first place?
Mar 11, 2023·edited Mar 11, 2023Liked by Ryan Peterman
In my limited experience I would say that asking for reason/cause at least one level up can help sort out and prevent a lot of misunderstandings. I think this also relates to knowing your coworkers/(clients/users). There's a lot less friction if people understand how many details and how deep to go when talking to you.
Definitely an underrated skill to know your audience so you understand what level of detail to communicate with. It's easy to discuss too much detail as an engineer when some audiences just want high level updates or how it affects the business/product.
I've heard from others that it's important to have soft skills (communicating, connecting with others, etc) with technical skills. Just having technical skills really isn't enough to become great.
Agreed, just having technical skills is not enough to become great since doing things yourself can only go so far. One way to have more impact is to develop the ability to influence others to ship what matters. Communication is a scalable way of influencing others.
Soft skills are incredibly important, but so is understanding that not everyone handles "social events" well - as a manager I recognise that members of my team have varying levels of ability to endure social interactions, and use that knowledge to help them on their journey, without overwhelming them
One thing I learnt is that no matter who the engineer is they love to have someone to listen to about their work, so that is 1 to 1 socialization I do as a junior engineer.
One mistake I made that I don't make now that I became a business owner is that you always need to ask yourself -- does what I'm doing generate sales and profits or not. Otherwise, why am I doing it in the first place?
That is a great point. I feel like as an engineer it's easy to be focused on the code rather than the business impact
In my limited experience I would say that asking for reason/cause at least one level up can help sort out and prevent a lot of misunderstandings. I think this also relates to knowing your coworkers/(clients/users). There's a lot less friction if people understand how many details and how deep to go when talking to you.
Definitely an underrated skill to know your audience so you understand what level of detail to communicate with. It's easy to discuss too much detail as an engineer when some audiences just want high level updates or how it affects the business/product.
I've heard from others that it's important to have soft skills (communicating, connecting with others, etc) with technical skills. Just having technical skills really isn't enough to become great.
Agreed, just having technical skills is not enough to become great since doing things yourself can only go so far. One way to have more impact is to develop the ability to influence others to ship what matters. Communication is a scalable way of influencing others.