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[Music] foreign welcome back to my Channel today I want to walk you through an actual workday of mine from 2023 as an engineering manager in general my job is to make sure that my team hits the goals that were set for them while also maintaining High code quality and a healthy team culture also I'm a people manager so I need to make sure that the engineers that are joining my team are growing in ways that they would like to grow in for example if I have a junior engineer that tells me that when I get promoted to a senior engineering level at some point I will Coach them to get there also you have to step into any roles that the team is currently lacking for example if your team doesn't have a PM the engineering manager is asked to be the PM for the team until they hire someone that means I often have to wear different hats depending on what my team needs at the time and that's what I'm optimizing for okay let's start with my day today I'm not going to talk about my morning routine you can watch this here at 10 am I serve my work day by catching up with messages is I am based on east coast and the majority of my team is based on the west coast so when I opened my laptop in the morning my message inbox is overflowing that typically takes me half an hour so at 10 30 I start checking my calendar and on a normal work day I spend about 50 of my time in meetings having this 15 minute routine in the morning actually helps me plan my day and it also makes it easier for me to have breaks in between at 10 45 am I start working on my to-do list typically this is a mix of action items from one-on-ones that I had with people action items from meetings action items from messages or conversations or project discussions that I had I try to and I have to delegate as much as possible to the senior Engineers on a team whenever I get some new requests in I always think okay can I delegate this item or do I need to do it myself at 11AM is when my meeting hours start I have very strict Meeting hours because I like to start the day by doing individual work and I also like to end the day to do some extra planning and to manage my time better on this day I started with a 30 minute and one-on-one with a software engineer that doesn't report to me directly but I collaborate with this person on a daily basis whenever I have other Engineers that are working with my team I try to meet with them on a weekly basis just to help with blockers answer any questions or give them space to give me feedback either about myself about the team about certain Engineers about cross-functional partners that we work with to resolve problems quicker yesterday and in this case we had to resolve a communication conflict that happened a day before which has led to confusion with our product manager much much later this meeting actually went 15 minutes longer than was planned because it was important for us to address the issues that happen and come to a common ground in meetings like this there's often very direct feedback given and also received which makes the collaboration a little bit more vulnerable but it's really essential if you want to have a successful and productive work environment with other people then after 45 minutes at 11 45 I go back to my desk and I continue you with my to-do list I am currently supporting a total amount of four product areas which makes it a bit more complicated to do my job to be honest but to properly do my job I need to review roadmaps that we set for those products in general our roadmap is something that the team discusses beforehand and then works on it for a certain amount of time in our case we were setting the roadmap for the next six months of the team and we were preparing for an important review that happens later in that day so I went through our 20-page proposal to resolve any outstanding comments that people have left there this document was mainly written by the product manager that I work with but it still needs insights from me and the tech leads on the team every now and then when it comes to technical guidance one minute 37 seconds later it is time for lunch and I don't have that much time so I just walk up to the cafeteria in my office building I grab lunch and that day I went back to my desk quite a way usually I try to eat with the team with my time and my calendar allows it but today I really able to focus on the feedback that I needed to give for that 20 Page proposal after my quick lunch I jumped to my next meeting which was a Incident Management review this is something that I need to attend whenever my team is causing a production problem that affected actual users and reviews like this are critical for big tech companies and software teams because we need to understand the blind spots of our production and discuss ways to prevent it in the future so typically you have a variety of people there you have the team manager you have the engineer that caused the problem you have the engineer to solve the problem you have some other senior Engineers there you have some cross-functional partners for example data scientists in order to understand how this problem affected our users problems like this happen on a regular basis so it's not that big of a deal when it happens I do want to note that whenever things happen in production we try to never blame the engineer that caused the problem because we believe in a growth mindset we think everyone makes mistakes but for us it's more important that Engineers don't make the same mistake twice so in those meetings we really try to focus on okay how can we prevent this in the future later then at 1 pm I have the critical review of the 20-page roadmap for my team so this is the time to discuss it with other people in my company and we typically call this an alignment meeting where all cross-functional partners and also some higher up people come together and evaluate the roadmap that we were brainstorming and see if it makes sense see if the team has all the necessary amount of people to make it happen or making sure we don't have any blockers going forward meetings like this often also include senior Engineers or Tech lead because we need to establish a common ground for the work that we're signing up for early and make sure it's technically possible and to be honest those meetings are really fun for me because they're very fast paced they're very action oriented they're encouraging a high stress environment for me and I don't like that because I really need to be alert and I have to put on a a very professional persona for the entire meeting at 1 30 PM I have the next meeting which is a one-on-one with a different engineering manager he is leading a different part of the organization that I work with and we need to align our team's road maps together given that our Engineers they depend on each other they work with each other and they review each other's code even so we discussed the basics of the roadmap that we need to align on we also established the core principles of working with each other then we cut the meeting short we discussed all the essential pieces this person is really fun to work with so it's very easy to get alignment very quickly then at 145 I have a 15 minute break yay and I really need it because I'm thirsty so I go to the kitchen and I make some tea while I run into an engineer that I used to manage we just church out for a bit about how the company is doing how their new team is I always try to take the time to catch up with people and form a personal Bond I really value the connections and friendships that you can form at work after my quick break my meetings continue this time my meeting with one of the junior Engineers on my team I currently support nine engineers and I meet with them every week for at least 30 minutes those one-on-ones I see as a shared responsibility both them and I contribute to the agenda to make it a productive conversation in this case I was meeting with a new team member that just graduated college and we spent the majority of the meeting talking about how to find a good balance of asking for help from more experienced Engineers when you need it and diving into the code base yourself trying to figure it out alone whenever conversations like this come up I usually try to listen first and ask questions and then after I get a good grasp of the whole story I try to offer advice and in this case this engineer was really worried about asking too many questions but in reality that was not really a problem so I encourage them to continue asking questions as needed I care more about getting things done versus asking too many questions initially because that's how you learn and that's very normal and expected then at 2 30 p.m I have another one-on-one this time it's with one of the tech leads on my team this meeting is one of the most important meetings of my day because I need to align with them on the review that we had before this person is based in a different office so most of our communication happens over text and over chat having one-on-one time is really important for us with the tech leads that work with me I always try to establish an excellent level of trust you can't afford not giving each other critical feedback when things go south in this meeting specifically we had a very constructive conversation about one part of the roadmap that we presented earlier because there were a lot of questions on it and I'm questioning if it's even doable in a given time frame so together we came to the conclusion that it's probably not even possible to do it with what we have and we have to push back on it at 3 pm I have a quick break and after the meeting I just had I think both both my tech lead and I got equally frustrated at some point because we know how much extra work there will be for us to have those alignment conversations again so I go back to the kitchen and I make myself another tea to get into a better headspace I try to work from a public area in the office just to get my mind off things so while sitting there I saw that my product manager wants to meet me ASAP to discuss the review so I moved some meetings around and I meet her at 10 seconds later 3 30 PM which is now I have a really solid relationship with the product manager I work with so we start the meeting on a lightweight note we express our frustrations to each other because both of us know that we didn't really get to the state where we wanted to go and we probably need to revise the roadmap further to make stuff happen I'm honestly a bit disappointed in this because I was waiting for this roadmap to get finalized so I can give some of the junior Engineers on my team projects they've been waiting for those projects for a while and I need to tell them yet again hey sorry it's not yet finalized so the PM and I we start making a plan with action items for the both of us we finished a meeting by just chit chatting a bit about life meanwhile at the same time at 3 58 PM I've received a text from a friend of mine asking if I'm still joining for dinner at 6 PM so I quickly look at my calendar and I see that the last meeting is supposed to end at 5 30 pm and I confirmed the dinner at 4 pm I have another meeting and this time it's my team's weekly meeting at this stage of the day I am pretty tired and I'd rather just sit at my desk and not talk to anyone for the next two hours but as an engineering manager my job is also to bring the team together and make sure they engage with each other our agenda today is about the review that we had earlier and also an engineer is giving a product Showcase of something they worked on the week before we end the meeting five minutes early which is great for me because I can hide at my desk for a bit a few inches later and I don't have anything scheduled for the next 30 minutes and I use this time to read messages that I received from the day and realize that my my manager has messaged me about wanting an update from the review we're having a longer discussion about if the team has enough Engineers to do what we'd like to do or if there's any blockers I think could happen with cross-functional Partners after this quick chat with my manager I have my last meeting for the day at 5 PM which is a technical Deep dive and in this meeting I can finally sit back a bit and just listen because it's a technical Deep dive that an engineer is doing for others and they are explaining how a certain software works and they're giving a deep dive into the code base during this meeting I also quickly check in on a code contributions that my team did in a past day just to understand if any of the projects is blocked or if the quality of the code has declined it's important to note here that it's not my responsibility or expectation as an engineering manager to review code anymore but I still like to check in every now and then because it helps me understand what's going on and I can give much better feedback to Engineers when the time comes this was my last meeting of the day and before I leave the office us one eternity later I quickly update my to-do list and I answer any questions that I received during the day I try to write down everything that I need to do on the next day so I can relax and not think about work after hours after that I leave the office at 5 45 pm and I go to dinner with my friend if you like this video please subscribe to this Channel and see you next time [Music]