Find solution
Electric engineering questions.

Why do engineering manager interviews include coding questions?

  • I'm an engineering manager with eight direct reports and my management duties are a full time job. There's no time (or expectation) to write code and involvement in code reviews, if any, is minimal. I have a tech lead to do most of that, although I have a good technical understanding of what my group works on. I focus on other aspects: how each engineer can grow in their career, how to get better with project management, hiring/firing, handling large structural problems with how we make our products end-to-end (e.g., the loop between PM, engineering, QE, marketing/sales, back to PM, ...). Yet, when I interview with other companies, I'm surprised that the first step for an engineering management position is a technical coding interview. I'm expecting questions like "What problems did you identify in the company and how did you create or modify an engineering process in order to address it?" and instead, I'm reversing a linked list with tail recursion. Why does that happen? Larry White alludes to this phenomenon here: http://architects.dzone.com/articles/google-tech-lead-engineering ... but I think there's a legitimate role for "traditional" engineering managers, instead of the hybrid Tech Lead / Manager.

  • Answer:

    I work for an Internet company.  We have fully functional teams lead by individuals like yourself.  We need our managers to dive deep from time to time. Here are some additional thoughts I had on the topic.

Eliot Pearson at Quora Visit the source

Was this solution helpful to you?

Other answers

I think this says it all: For your own good, get into good engineering shape to be relevant. I've seen many people with "manager" in the title and responsibility of shared personal assistant. Hey, "manager", we are working late, could you order pizza? Hey, "manager", can you setup a meeting with product folks? We need to discuss things. Hey, "manager", can you go and do paperwork to buy computers?

Anonymous

IMHO, you are looking for a Product Manager role or Project Manager role but giving interviews for technical PM role. The role which you have done in the past aligns with project management role. As a technical PM, one is expected to review codes and hence, to write codes.

Ajeet Gupta

This is mostly around the fear that the eng manager doesn't know anything about technology and will be unable to earn the respect of his/her reports. Normally folks dedicated fully to process/people is at the director level, where that technical expectation is lessened to the point that they will trust your resume rather than do a technical interview.

Michal Klos

A2A.  My guess is so they can see if you will be able to relate to your workers enough that your workers will respect your leadership. What I would do is... as I begin to answer the coding question (to demonstrate my cooperativeness),  casually and pleasantly ask why they are asking a coding question and how it relates to the position you are interviewing, and see what they say.

Glenn Jenkinson

To be able to realistically manage engineers you need to understand what they do. You must be able to meet them on a logical level, and understand explanations.Even if you don’t do day to day coding, you should be able to speak the same language.I’ve worked for managers with no coding skills, and spent a fraction of my time trying to educate them, as they had final say on yes or no on topics they had no clue about.I would argue the term “Manager” is key. You cannot manage what you cannot understand, measure, and analyze.

Steve Cook

Related Q & A:

Just Added Q & A:

Find solution

For every problem there is a solution! Proved by Solucija.

  • Got an issue and looking for advice?

  • Ask Solucija to search every corner of the Web for help.

  • Get workable solutions and helpful tips in a moment.

Just ask Solucija about an issue you face and immediately get a list of ready solutions, answers and tips from other Internet users. We always provide the most suitable and complete answer to your question at the top, along with a few good alternatives below.