What do you know about engineering?

What's the value of an engineering manager if you're working with smart engineers who know what they are doing already?

• I am a product manager with a good technical background. I work with a small team of engineers, designers and testers. I am lucky to work with very smart engineers. Those engineers report to an engineering manager. Every engineering decision is made collaboratively amongst the engineers without actually referring to the engineering manager. The engineering manager doesn't actually know the technology we're using. He just knows the very high level of it. What's the value of the engineering manager besides people management?.

• Answer:

  Fear not, for this is the right and proper way of the universe. People who do not code for a living should not be making technical decisions for those who do. In doing so, individual engineers are robbed of autonomy and mastery. You will find they take less pride in their work and your quality will suffer. What should that manager be working on: Hiring - job #1. Improving your company's engineering brand, to attract better and better talent. Figuring out the right profile of new hire to be successful building your product. Working with recruiting to target those engineers and making sure you impress them when they get in the door. Systems - iterating on the process of building software to increase throughput and remove gates and checkpoints, making sure engineers don't get blocked by trivialities. Process will evolve with the company / team, so this job is constant and vital. Training - is your engineers learning? Are they learning more of their discipline and cross-training in other disciplines that might be applicable to your product? The manager should be the driver of this. Other People Stuff - just general HR-type things that will arise over time. Some personality conflicts, etc. can be handled before they cost you an employee, the manager should be on the lookout for those.