My current title is “Director” in a traditional retail company (not a tech or engineering-first company). Despite the seniority I have had zero direct reports in my career. I have “managed” consultants throughout my career which has mostly meant assigning tasks, talking through designs with them, conducting occasional 1:1s, providing feedback and conveying appreciation on a job well done, providing business context around a project or in general, with little to no control over their career growth and development.
The feedback I have received is positive - “feel supported”, “has a calming effect on the team during high-pressure/stress situations”, “always willing to provide detailed technical and business info”, “great communicator”, etc. I also don’t see consultants as “not-employees” and treat them the same as an employee.
All this combined with a general liking towards people and slightly extroverted nature made me assume that I have the necessary qualities for an engineering manager at a big tech company too. But I have no idea what it actually means to build a team, have direct reports and manage their careers and development.
Any and all thoughts are appreciated but these questions come to mind:
* In what ways are managing consultants and managing employees different especially in FAANG/big tech companies? * Should I be honest about my (lack of) people management experience during interviews or should I answer using my consultant-management experience? * What are some day to day examples of the type of tasks/decisions as an engineering manager? * How is being a manager different than being a Tech Lead in a tech company?
My personal take on this is it's very difficult to measure an EM's ability before hiring. The job just feels really subjective with infinite variations on how to approach it. So what you need is some other kind of je ne sais quoi to get people excited about you. Maybe you have a lot of mutual contacts that praise you highly. Maybe you come in as part of an acquisition and the acquiring company has a lot of respect for you. Stuff like that. Either way I don't think the ability to do the day-to-day work is a good enough to get hired (which sucks, but remember "grain of salt").
Tasks and differences from tech lead vary between companies. In general though an EM isn't writing as much code. Mostly focused on coordinating meetings, hiring, and making sure their team's projects are headed in the right direction. EMs also tend have a strong influence on the engineering culture (establishing and enforcing it). So for example an EM might push heavily for TDD and pair programming on their team while another EM might focus on other stuff like rapid prototyping.
Tech lead OTOH may also influence a decision on TDD/pairing from the previous example, but not exactly establish the guideline for the team to do it. Tech lead would choose the testing framework not the EM. OTOH EMs might have a strong influence over larger engineering decisions (like using K8s or not).