- If the team has high cycle time[1] (above 5 days) it’s on the EM
- If the team isn’t continuously improving their process to deliver more effectively & reduce bottlenecks, it’s on the EM
- If the team is not communicating well or working well together it’s on the EM.
- If the engineers who report to them don’t have the right skillset to tackle their problems it’s on the EM
- If the engineers who report to them aren’t focussed on their work it’s on the EM
- If engineers that report to them have performance problems that impact teams being able to deliver, it’s on the EM
- If engineers that report to them don’t have personal goals & career development plans that line up with team goals, it’s on the EM
- Work with PM/ED/EL/Designer to create key results for squads
- Evolve Agile approach to fit team and project needs.
- Foster continuous improvement mindset amongst squad
- Challenge squad to identify bottlenecks & ways of speeding up delivery
- Guide effectiveness of team meetings. Ensure agendas/purpose are clear & actions captured.
- Ensure squad has the people and skill sets needed to achieve their goals
- Recruit for the squad
- Source engineers
- Motivate engineers to speak, do presentations, write blog posts, and contribute to open source projects (and do so oneself!)
- Participate in creating interview practice for Meetup engineering
- Update interview loops & training engineers to use them for hiring
- Work with recruiting to ensure the loops run smoothly
- Make the final hiring decision
- Create the engineer’s onboarding plan and work with EL and others to ensure engineers are successfully onboarded
- Ensure engineers understand how the work they are doing ladders up to OKRs & wider company goals
- Ensure engineers have the skills needed to support their squad
- Ensure engineers are focussed on the sprint & stories at hand
- Deal with squad interpersonal issues
- Deal with performance issues
- Create compensation change recommendations and share with directors
- Coach engineers career paths and personal growth in a way that lines up with squads goals
- Coach engineers to set personal goals & assist in defining steps to achieve them
- Coach engineers to set goals that push them out of their comfort zone and promote growth
- Manage professional development budget for direct reports (both time and $$)
- Be a sponsor for engineers so they have access to growth opportunities they wouldn’t otherwise have on their own
- Make sure ELs are aware of growth & learning opportunities engineers are looking for so they can enable that if possible
- Coordinate with EL to reinforce coaching that is happening for technical development & good engineering practices
- Actively work to help the squad form & bond
[1] Time between an engineer starting work on a story & it being live in production