The Engineering Manager

Here we go again…

It’s approaching 3PM. You’re leaning against the wall outside the meeting room, bracing yourself for the sheer boredom and monotony of the coming hour. Sigh.

Each week, you sit down with your manager and, regrettably, you slowly plod through a status update for each of your projects while she makes notes on her laptop. In last week’s meeting, you drifted into daydream whilst you were looking out of the window behind her. You saw a dog trot past the building that had never experienced the concept of having a meeting. You were deeply envious. You wondered whether you could replace your current presence with an audio recording of yourself instead. It would probably be much more engaged.

When you first started attending 1 to 1 meetings with your manager, they were interesting; you felt like you were really getting to know each other, and learning about how each of you liked to work. But now that you’re beyond the introductory phase of your relationship, you’re finding that all that there is left to talk about is the projects you’re doing, week in, week out. Should you both just call this meeting off and resort to email instead? After all, these project updates come through your sprint demo meetings already…

How did it get this way? Do you staff feel the same about their meetings with you? What can you do?

The slide towards monotony

As we previously explored, your 1 to 1 meetings are really important. They’re your primary opportunity to engage with your staff each week and your best chance to really get to know them on a personal level. You can discuss pretty much anything, and when they’re run well they can make a significant impact on the wellbeing and happiness of your employees. They can experience leaving that meeting room each week feeling listened to, supported and understood.

However, as with many aspects of life, comfort and repetition can breed complacency. Once you and your staff have gotten into a rhythm, you may find that your weekly interactions slide from something that you used to look forward to into something that you begin to dread. The mere sight of them in your calendar triggers aversion. Oh dear. Before you know it, you’re both rattling through the same status updates as last week, both wishing that you were somewhere else in the world: maybe in the forest at sunset, or in bed, or perhaps walking alongside that dog that’s never had a meeting.

1 to 1s that are nothing but status updates have no place in your life. They’re boring, they don’t contribute to either of your personal development, and they’re just a repeat of information that could be better recorded and broadcast elsewhere.

I would be so bold as to attempt to coin a theory:

With time, and without conscious effort, all 1 to 1 meetings will degenerate into status updates.

Can we call that Stanier’s Law? Regardless, it’s your duty to make sure that they don’t. But how?

Keeping them fresh

Fortunately, there are a whole bunch of ways that you can make your catch-ups more interesting. They do require more conscious effort and planning, but this is definitely worthwhile. We can split the techniques into two camps: those that involve making the content of the standard meeting more engaging, and those that represent more occasional and radical changes to the meetings to make them more exciting.

Better topics for discussion

Given that the topics of conversation will degrade as you become more comfortable with each other, the first solution is quite obvious: have better topics! I was initially thinking of describing these topics as your poker hand: in that you can choose to play them when you feel the need, but that’s not really how the game of poker works. You don’t play individual cards. Instead, your topics of conversation are more like (and do forgive me) cards in a Pokémon hand, or a Magic: The Gathering hand; you only really use one at a time in response to a situation… but let’s get on with having a look at the topics of conversation you could use before I reveal even more embarrassing things about myself.

• Personal development. This goes without saying, but do make sure that you check-in regularly on this subject. This doesn’t necessarily mean that this conversation needs to involve peeling through annual review notes, but there are a number of ways that you can probe into how they’re getting along. How productive are they feeling? Do they still feel like they’re being challenged and are working on interesting problems? Why did they seem to get frustrated in that meeting last week? Ask open questions and then explore the deeper reasons why they feel a particular way.
• Goals. This is slightly more formal, but how are they progressing towards their goals for the year? Are they getting enough opportunity to actively work towards them? Do they even have any? If their goal is to aim for a promotion, are you both allowing enough opportunity for them to work towards it? If not, how can you make that happen? Perhaps their feelings towards their initial goals have waned, and it’s time to talk about setting some new ones.
• Following their interest in skills or technology. What technology have they read about recently that really excites them? Have they watched any conference talks that have seeded their brains with an idea that they want to try out on their next project? What technology do they think that the company could really benefit from? What features would it enable? Where is the industry going and what are other technology companies doing that catch their attention? How could we replicate that success?
• What are they excited about? What concerns them? This goes broader than their team or the technology they are using. What did they think of the last company meeting? How do they feel about the company at the moment? Do they think that it is succeeding or failing? Do they feel that the culture of the company is supportive and open, or are there problems on the horizon? Which companies out there appear to be doing well, and why? What makes them successful?

Widening the conversation not only makes your meetings fresher and more interesting, but it helps you get to know each other more deeply.

Mixing it up

Alongside regular injection of more stimulating topics, there are ways to occasionally take the meeting somewhere different entirely: both metaphorically and physically. I often find that in periods where everything is going swimmingly there can be a lot less to talk about; perhaps because we find ourselves naturally drawn to the dramatic. Since those are the times that conversation more easily drifts, so you can try to mix up your meetings further:

• Rubber duck your ideas. Are either of you working on something interesting at the moment? Why not use each other to sanity check your ideas? You could whiteboard the design of the feature you’re building and your direct report can offer critique. This shows that you value their opinion as a peer which in turn builds trust and rapport. It’s even better if they find holes in it that you can fix together.
• Go wide with conversation topics. Think outside of the company. Are they concerned about changes in the industry, or any items in the news such as the Cambridge Analytica allegations? What impact does that have on your own company? Which websites and apps are they using that they love at the moment? Why do they love them? Could any of those features work their way into your own software?
• Flip the meeting. Instead of you driving the meeting, why not let them drive? Why not have them ask you about what you’re working on and what’s on your mind?
• Go outside! We’ve been encouraging getting out of the building into the fresh air and having walking meetings. Getting away from the meeting room that you sit in every week can be extremely beneficial for the mind and some extra exercise can’t hurt either. Back in 2013, Jeff Weiner wrote about his shift to walking 1 to 1s. Although it’s a bit harder to take notes (often you have to transcribe quickly afterwards) it’s extremely refreshing to get active and have a more energized conversation, especially if you work near some nice public spaces.

In summary

With time, and without conscious effort, all 1 to 1 meetings will degenerate into status updates. Don’t let that happen. Keep the topics of conversation fresh and find ways to keep your regular check-ins as something that you look forward to, rather than something you dread.

The jobs they are a-changin’

When my father retired from his role as a civil servant ten years ago, he had been in his current role for eighteen years. That wasn’t necessarily eighteen years of solid growth and progression, either. It was just eighteen years of grafting the same old, day in, day out, in order to make sure that he provided for our family. Granted, my father was not working in technology, and also granted – and I am sure he wouldn’t mind me saying – he was not as career driven as many of us working in technology are. Yet, the generation that are beginning to retire are leaving behind a work landscape that is radically different from the one that they entered. Jobs for life, secure tenure and final salary pensions are pretty much a thing of the past. The new workforce must be more entrepreneurial, and as a result, they are less loyal to the companies they work for.

The tenure of my father’s last job is almost unheard of in technology. The average time spent in one role has been trending dramatically downward with time. When Travis Kalanick stepped down from his role as CEO of Uber in 2017, he had been in the job for 6.5 years. This was 5 times longer than the average Uber employee at 1.32 years. According to Business Insider, the average tenure at Facebook was 2.02 years, Google 1.9 years, Apple 1.85 years and Snap 1.62. Job hopping has nearly doubled in the last 20 years. The fact is inescapable: it is the world we now live in.

If you are a manager who thinks that your staff are going to stay loyal to you for many years, then you are only setting yourself up for disappointment. But there are ways that you can increase the chance that staff are going to stay longer than average in your organization. Before we look at some techniques that can help retain staff, let’s have a look into why people are motivated to move around.

Why are people changing jobs so much?

There are many reasons why people in the technology industry find themselves with itchy feet. These reasons are not necessarily mutually exclusive, either. They compound to create even more compelling reasons to keep changing role. Job hopping is more prevalent in the younger members of the workforce, but the following reasons are also applicable to staff of all ages.

• Economic and social instability. For those that are just graduating from university, economic and personal situations are challenging. The increasingly high cost of housing, especially in metropolitan areas where jobs are, and mounting debt from education mean that being able to purchase a home and find a stable job that pays well is tough. Given that there is less to lose, many use their twenties and early thirties as a time to not settle, and instead let their career pull them towards new experiences and locations.
• Wanting to experience the broadest possible work. Technology moves exceptionally fast. Many companies do not allow enough opportunity for their staff to experience a varying range of challenges and technologies on a regular basis, so leaving to work elsewhere is often less effort than waiting for the latest open source projects to gain traction from within or for a more interesting role to open up in another team.
• Pay. As disappointing as the situation in, in general, the easiest time to negotiate a big pay rise is when you are changing to a new job. Given how much saving is required to put down a deposit on a first property, it’s no wonder that many people, as they gain experience, find that changing job rather than fighting for an internal promotion is the easiest way of increasing their salary and thus making steps towards securing their financial future. Engineering skills, especially in big data and AI, are in exceptionally high demand and there are many more jobs than there are qualified applicants.
• Embracing challenge and risk. Changing jobs frequently means that people don’t have to live with long-term consequences. Large, complex, draining projects can create epic amounts of technical debt and maintenance, and changing jobs is a way of always being involved in the exciting stages of projects rather than having to pick up the pieces at the end.
• Frustration. After the honeymoon period is over and the realities of a new role have settled in, frustration can begin to build. That colleague who is an absolute pain to work with. That manager who won’t allow for any career progression. That death march project that won’t ever end. That old legacy part of the system that keeps blowing up. It’s much harder to negotiate sweeping change from within, and it is often highly political. Sometimes it’s just easier to quit and move elsewhere.
• Reduced stigma. While thirty years ago a CV listing five roles in six years may have been read with a furrowed brow, our attitude to frequent job switching has changed. If the average tenure at the top technology companies is so low, and they attract the most talented people, then others will feel less worried about the impressions of others when considering to look elsewhere.

I would advise staying neutral on whether changing jobs frequently is inherently bad or good since, as shown in the list above, there are many factors outside of your control that contribute to people wanting to move around. I am not one to judge the lives of others.

Similarly, if you are reviewing CVs, try to remain unbiased about applicants who have frequently changed job; there may be perfectly good reasons. The inverse is also true: people who have been in the same role for a long time aren’t necessarily stale, either. They may just be happy and settled. We’re all different.

Working with it

Yet, with all of the above factors working against you when it comes to retaining your staff, what can you do? Let’s see.

I chose the heading “working with it” very deliberately. If you think that you’re able to prevent people from leaving then you’re only going to feel extra bad when they eventually do. However, there are strategies that you can employ to increase the likelihood that people are going to stay for longer. Staff who have been at your organization the longest have domain knowledge that cannot be brought in easily from elsewhere. It’s invaluable.

So, what can we do?

• Map out career tracks. What does progression look like in your organization? What are all of the roles that you have available? What is expected at the levels of seniority in different roles? If you already have this documented, then that’s fantastic. If you don’t, it’s never too late to start. Career tracks can help staff orient themselves with their current position and provide plenty of fuel for conversations about how they can progress to the next level. The simple act of mapping out different career paths is a radical act of showing that your organization cares about retaining and growing its staff.
• Create opportunities to learn, no matter how small. Make sure that growth is part of the regular conversations that you are having with your staff. Growth doesn’t have to mean constant promotion and pay rises, although those definitely help! Creating opportunities to try new projects, to work on different parts of the application, to mentor junior staff, to try out new technologies and work with different colleagues are all much simpler ways of giving your staff variety and learning opportunities.
• Encourage side-stepping. Enabling growth isn’t necessarily all about growing upwards and becoming ever more senior in one discipline. Sometimes people leave jobs because they think they might want to change from frontend to backend development. Or perhaps a technical support engineer wants to retrain as a delivery manager. Rather than losing your staff, why not allow this to happen at your own organization? Long tenured staff have a wealth of organizational domain knowledge that is a real shame to lose. Don’t be afraid of dipping into net-negative productivity for a temporary period if it means retaining some talented people.
• Treat those born in captivity the same as those raised in the wild. Because of the severe talent shortage in technology, companies offer extremely compelling compensation packages to get candidates in the door. Your company may also do the same, but make sure that your existing staff are also able to grow to achieve the same levels of compensation as those that come in from outside. Allow loyalty to your company to be rewarded.
• Be open about pay. Don’t make pay a taboo subject. Encourage your staff to discuss it whenever they want to; nobody works for free, after all. Convince your organization to do salary benchmarking for each role so that discussions around pay have real context through data. There are a number of services that can help you do this. If a member of your staff feels that they are underpaid despite the data telling you otherwise, turn the conversation towards how they can set growth goals to work towards increasing their pay over the coming year. Use pay as leverage to encourage growth.

In summary

You can’t prevent people from job hopping, especially in their early careers where they have fewer commitments and increased opportunity to explore themselves and the world around them. However, there are many things that you can do to make it more likely that your staff will stay for longer, and these changes will also benefit those that are happily tenured.

* My father’s job was a much less important part of his life than mine is to me, but that doesn’t make me any less grateful for the effort that he put in to make sure that I had a good upbringing. Thank you, Dad!