Who do Software Engineers work for?

What Technology People Leadership Really Means

When you meet a software engineer and ask them “who do you work for” they would typically say “I work for this company XYZ”. Over the years of running highly committed teams of excellent software engineers, I have realized this is far from the truth.

I have met hundreds of candidates at various stages of interviews and the most common answer from engineers for their looking for a change is “I am not learning anything new” or “I am not seeing any growth”. Digging a little deeper, I would always find truth in the maxim “People join the company but leave the manager”. Such engineers look for a change, because they intuitively sense a risk to their careers.

This does not even mean that the engineer’s manager was particularly bad or was nasty … like the ones depicted in Scott Adams’ Dilbert strips. They were in fact nice people — in fact too nice. Its just plain immaturity on the part of the manager to not detect the key thing they are responsible as a “manager” — their team members’ learning and growth.

I have seen a strong correlation to an engineer’s technical ability (smartness) and hunger (desire to take on a challenge) to the time they perceive career risk. A general formulation of this could be:

Career Risk Perception = Capability + Hunger

The converse of this rule also applies; the only people who are “happy” working under such “nice” managers are engineers who are “comfortable” with their easy pace of work. Often, such managers will get “good feedback” in HR sponsored engagement surveys because the team has a mutually beneficial relationship of an immature manager and a coast-along team. Such a mutual admiration society is fertile ground for destroying careers.

In industries where the rate of obsolescence is low (construction, manufacturing, call centers) the lack of learning opportunities is not career threatening… but in the world of software and technology, this is the biggest career threat. The above truism could be formulated as:

Career Risk Perception = Obsolescence Rate * (Capability + Hunger)

Sorry… we got carried away with formulae. Who does the software engineer work for again?

The real answer is, they work for their manager — the person who is responsible for their technical growth and the one who creates the context of their work.

The best managers to lead teams of software engineers are people who possess the following attributes:

• The are strongly technical. They don’t have to be the smartest in the room; but good enough to challenge assumptions and designs/solutions with good questions
• They are capable and open to working with their team members, shoulder to shoulder and show how to solve problems when they are stuck; Alternatively, they must be able to ask probing questions or point in the direction where a smart/hungry engineer can find the solution;
• They are sensitive to the level of knowledge of an engineer and creatively find situations where they challenge engineers. Not creating their own “pet projects” but recognizing real business problems the team needs to solve and creatively provide a context for a problem that is above an engineers capability to solve. Feed the hungry fish and it will keep coming back to you!! The surest way to demotivate an good software engineer is to get them engaged in problems they are 100% sure of succeeding in.

Unfortunately, there are no designations for such managers in the industry. But the attributes above are what defines a technology people leader.

Conclusion:

Good software engineers work for their people leaders who happen to have designations of managers. The company XYZ only happens to pay their salaries.

So, as you comprehend taking up positions in people leadership for technology companies, ask yourselves if you truly enjoy creating such an environment for smart and hungry people to work “for you”. If so, go ahead and dive into to the deep end of the pool and you will learn to swim.

Enjoy swimming!