The Engineering Manager

If you’ve had periods in your leadership journey where you feel like you’re generating more to-do items than you can handle, then you’re not alone. Every day, you might add five or ten items to your list, each representing an entire project that could take weeks or even months to complete. For example, after a busy Monday your list might have the following items added to it: Sigh. And that’s on top of the existing […]

This month we have a mailbag question from a reader who asks: Hi James, Your newsletter “being in the details” resonated with me. I would like to ask your opinion about managers writing code. I skim PRs but don’t critically review them and don’t write code. Should EMs write code in their day job? Thanks! It’s a great question, and given the higher scrutiny we’ve seen on the role of engineering managers in the past few years, […]