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Engineering Managers Should Not Have the Best Tech Skills in Team
Recently I was re-reading one of my favorite engineering articles The Trident Model of Career Development by Patrick Kua. The sentence that caught my eye this time was a note about the role of a Tech Lead:
They should have good but not necessarily the best [tech] skills in the team they are leading.
‘How does this apply to an Engineering Manager?’ came to my mind instantly. And my initial response was that it’s the same. Yet, after some more thought and thinking about the Engineering Managers I’ve met, I was not sure. Then I made my mind: no, it’s not the same. Now, I think that it is actually dangerous when an Engineering Manager has the best tech skills in the team.
Let me show you why.
1. They cannot utilize it
Becoming a manager is a big lateral step for an engineer. While they can draw from their tech experience, being a manager requires a very different set of skills, and–what makes it even more challenging–many of these will be completely new for them. There are so many activities that are not coding, reviewing, or architecting. The new manager simply doesn’t have the time to use their tech skills as they did before. That means that the team and the company now lost a significant portion of tech contributions.
