#94 - Engineering Manager Essentials - Patrick Kua

“An engineering manager should make sure that the team has a good balance of delivering things that the business needs with enough capacity to do it sustainably over time." Patrick Kua is a seasoned technology leader with a passion to accelerate the growth and success of tech organisations and technical leaders. In this episode, we discussed Pat’s latest course, Engineering Manager Essentials, which covers all the building blocks required to be an effective Engineering Manager (EM). We first discussed what an EM role is, how it differs from a tech lead role, and the common manager vs IC career track. Pat shared his view on why being an EM is not a promotion and what are some of the success criteria to be a good EM. Towards the end, Pat shared some anti-patterns that EM should avoid to become successful. Listen out for: Pat’s Latest - [00:07:30] Engineering Manager Essentials - [00:09:25] The Role of Engineering Manager - [00:11:21] Difference With Tech Lead - [00:14:19] Manager and IC Paths - [00:16:28] EM Is Not a Promotion - [00:21:02] EM Success Criteria - [00:28:08] Multiplier Instead of Maker - [00:30:48] Course Structure - [00:33:21] Interviewing EM - [00:37:20] Antipattern 1: Continuing as a Maker - [00:39:58] Antipattern 2: Assuming Everyone Knows What You Do - [00:43:01] Antipattern 3: Optimizing Parts Instead of The Whole - [00:48:34] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:51:30] _____ Patrick Kua’s Bio Patrick Kua is a seasoned technology leader with 20+ years of experience having done a wide variety of roles including being a developer, tech lead, consultant, CTO and more. His current mission is accelerating the growth of technical leaders through coaching, mentoring and training. Follow Patrick: Website – https://patkua.com/ Twitter – @patkua LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/patkua/ EM Essentials Course – https://www.patkua.com/em-essentials/ Tech Lead Academy – https://techlead.academy/ Level Up Newsletter – https://levelup.patkua.com/ Our Sponsors DevTernity 2022 (devternity.com) is the top international software development conference with an emphasis on coding, architecture, and tech leadership skills. The lineup is truly stellar and features many legends of software development like Robert "Uncle Bob" Martin, Kent Beck, Scott Hanselman, Venkat Subramaniam, Kevlin Henney, and many others! The conference takes place online, and we have the 10% discount code for you: AWSM_TLJ. Skills Matter is the global community and events platform for software professionals. It is an easier way for technologists to grow their careers by connecting you and your peers with the best-in-class tech industry experts and communities. You get on-demand access to their latest content, thought leadership insights as well as the exciting schedule of tech events running across all time zones. Head on over to skillsmatter.com to become part of the tech community that matters most to you - it’s free to join and easy to keep up with the latest tech trends. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/94.