“Engineering management isn’t inherently a bureaucratic, mystical, or mediocre profession,” said Will Larson, responding to my question asking what he believes is the main takeaway from his book, An Elegant Puzzle. He continued, “it’s a delightful series of puzzles, and there are better and worse answers to each puzzle.”
In reflecting on his response and digesting his book’s content, I asked myself, what if there are better ways to anticipate the challenges engineering leaders are tackling?
Let’s take a step back.
A few months ago, I was scrolling through my LinkedIn feed and came across a post by an engineering executive who I admire recommending engineering leaders to read “An Elegant Puzzle.”
When I perused through the book synopsis, it didn’t seem like a book I’d enjoy, but I decided to give it a read hoping to learn something new. The book tackles the various challenges of engineering management and “balances structured principles and human-centric thinking to help any leader create more effective and rewarding organizations for engineers to thrive in.“
Will Larson draws from his experience at Digg, Uber, and Stripe in writing this book. He is currently the CTO of Calm, the #1 app for meditation and sleep, where he continues to apply and refine the principles discussed in his book.
After reading the book, I reached out to Will and asked him:
“If there is one main takeaway from An Elegant Puzzle that you want to make sure people reflect on after reading it, what would it be?“
His response was:
Engineering management isn’t inherently a bureaucratic, mystical, or mediocre profession. It’s a delightful series of puzzles, and there are better and worse answers to each puzzle. I challenge folks to spend a bit more time thinking about the critical decisions they make–organizational changes, promotions, assigning key projects, etc.–and look for a better way.
Interestingly, if you remove the word “Engineering” in the first sentence of Will’s response and start with “Management,” the core message stays intact. The reason being management in any profession has one thing in common – people. Just as a puzzle has individual pieces, individuals make a group of people.
Although pieces of a puzzle may have similar dimensions, placing a piece in the wrong spot would lead to the wrong answer. To correctly solve a puzzle, you’d need to set individual parts in the right area.
Whether you’re a people manager or individual contributor, this book has something for you.
As an individual contributor, I read the book through the lens of a Business to Business (B2B) Account Executive, and in doing so, one key concept inspired me to think differently on how I connect with engineering leaders.
Engineering leaders have a repository of frameworks to tackle process and people challenges.
The challenges engineering leaders face are similar to an extent, so frameworks are a common theme in this book. Will offers various frameworks that allow him to shorten the time it takes to arrive at a viable solution.
For example, one of the frameworks that resonated with me as a B2B account executive selling to engineering leaders is how to help these leaders build teams that are continuously innovating.
Will breaks down the four states of engineering teams framework:
- A team is falling behind if each week their backlog is longer than it was the week before. Typically, people are working extremely hard but not making much progress, morale is low, and users of the application are vocally dissatisfied.
- A team is treading water if they can get their critical work done but cannot pay down technical debt or begin major new projects.
- A team is repaying debt when they can start paying down technical debt and are beginning to benefit from the debt repayment snowball.
- A team is innovating when their technical debt is sustainably low, morale is high, and most work is satisfying new user needs.
As a B2B account executive looking to advise engineering leaders, a one-size-fits-all approach will not work. The advise I offer an engineering leader whose team is falling behind will be different than an engineering leader whose team is repaying debt.
Will offers a framework for engineering leaders responsible for fixing each state of the team described above:
- To fix a team falling behind, hire new people and increase capacity.
- To fix a team treading water, consolidate team efforts to finish more things, and reduce concurrent work until able to begin repaying debt.
- To fix a team repaying debt, add time to pay the debt.
- To maintain a team innovating, add slack in your team’s schedule so that the team can build quality into their work.
The four states of a team and how to fix each state framework are an invitation to step into an engineering leader’s mind and anticipate the outcomes he or she is seeking.
Also, the framework elevates our conversation’s content because it guides my curiosity to areas that are most relevant for engineering leaders. This means I can build authentic credibility and be viewed as a true partner rather than someone just trying to make a sale.
Below are the actions steps I plan to take. I invite you to experiment with me.
- Ask an engineering leader in your next meeting: “How would you describe the state of your team over the past 6 – 12months?“
- Listen for keywords that could point towards a team that is either falling behind, treading water, repaying debt, or innovating.
- Validate your hypothesis and understanding of the current state of the team by asking follow-up questions.
- Explain how your solution can bridge the gap between the current and ideal state of the team.
Thank you for reading.
Godspeed selling.