While there is overlap between the skills each role requires, technical leadership and engineering management are very different paths. Deciding which one to take depends on your natural strengths and interests.

The basic distinction between technical lead and manager roles is the emphasis on technology vs. people. Technical leads spend more time writing code and learning new technologies. Engineering managers spend more time helping people grow and collaborate effectively.

Alex Kavalsky, a Software Development Manager at Amazon, advises that management isn’t the right track for everyone. “Some engineers become managers because they like the idea of leading other people. I don’t think that’s enough.”

An effective software engineering manager is essential for the success of any engineering team. The following are some of the key qualities that make an engineering manager effective:

1. Technical knowledge: A good engineering manager should have a strong technical background, including hands-on experience in software development, to be able to understand the challenges faced by the team and provide effective solutions.

2. Communication skills: Engineering managers need to have excellent communication skills, both written and verbal, to be able to convey information and directives to their team, as well as to effectively communicate with stakeholders. Communication is vital for managers and engineers alike – teams perform best when everyone shares information effectively. However, becoming a manager significantly increases your communication responsibilities. For instance, EMs are expected to

• Set and communicate expectations to their team: “As a leader, your role is to connect everyday tasks with the larger question: Why does my team exist? When employees understand how their contributions impact the mission of your team and company, they will feel more engaged and inspired.” – Magda Miu, Engineering Manager at Adobe. Also, translate between executives and engineers
• Translate between executives and engineers: As a manager, your performance is measured by the business impact of your engineering teams. This means that you need to communicate effectively with executives and engineers – two groups that speak very different languages. “As an engineering leader, a regular part of my work was explaining the tradeoffs of technology investments to business people. Let’s say the business wants to implement two-factor authentication. From a business perspective, I can affirm the value of the idea while explaining the technical complexity behind it: it’s not as simple as adding a field to an existing feature.” – Karl Hughes. On the flip side, it’s also important to explain business decisions to your engineering teams. This can be challenging when the decisions require engineers to scrap a project or change course. However, you can maintain morale by communicating clearly and leading with empathy. “How can a manager ensure these drastic changes do not devalue dev work? By understanding the external changes from a business perspective, and then connecting those product imperatives to the team’s technical interests. Managers must communicate the why that drives a change in scope, and assure the team that the change is meant to empower their work to be even more valuable, more effective.” – Fahim ul Haq.

3. Lead by example: An effective engineering manager should be a role model for their team, setting a high bar for work quality, commitment, and collaboration. They should also be proactive in addressing any challenges the team faces, rather than simply delegating responsibilities.

4. Strategic thinking: Engineering managers should be able to think critically and holistically about the development process, and be able to identify areas for improvement. They should also be able to set clear goals and prioritize tasks to ensure their team stays on track.

5. Problem-solving skills: Effective engineering managers need to be able to identify problems and develop solutions in a timely manner. They should also be able to anticipate potential roadblocks and be proactive in preventing them from occurring.

6. Emotional intelligence: Engineering managers should be able to understand the emotional state of their team and provide support and guidance when needed. They should also be able to handle conflicts in a professional and respectful manner.

7. Adaptability: In today’s fast-paced and ever-changing technology landscape, engineering managers need to be adaptable and willing to embrace new technologies and methodologies. They should also be able to motivate their team to continuously improve and evolve.

8. Extreme sense of ownership: Engineers measure their success by the quality of their code. For engineering managers, success is measured by the impact of people, processes, and delivery. Moving into management means owning new processes. Instead of focusing on writing great code, you will be expected to show bias for action by looping in the right people, providing feedback, and communicating with stakeholders as well as Making tough decisions that will benefit the business when a group can’t reach a consensus. Being empathetic doesn’t mean avoiding uncomfortable conversations. In fact, a lack of clarity around changing goals and expectations will prevent your team from adapting successfully. Depending on your management style, you may need to make a conscious effort to be more transparent and ensure your team has the level of structure and clarity they need.

9. Interest in Mentorship: Engineering management is all about supporting business goals and people’s career growth. To find a successful balance, Ariel Weinberger keeps these 3 things in mind which are:

• The business strives to make money.
• Your team needs the motivation to achieve business goals.
• Software engineers want to grow and work on exciting projects

The trick is to negotiate these 3 points and find as many win-win solutions as possible. Through ongoing mentorship, you can help engineers grow in a way that also serves the business. As an EM, you will spend a lot of time helping engineers identify strengths and opportunities for growth. This includes regular 1:1s to help engineers find projects that advance their careers while accelerating the team

In conclusion, an effective engineering manager possesses a combination of technical expertise, leadership skills, strategic thinking, problem-solving abilities, emotional intelligence, and adaptability. These qualities allow them to effectively guide their team to deliver high-quality products and achieve their goal

Article Submitted by Daniel Ale, Chief Technology Officer, Prunedge. 

What exactly is work-life balance? 

Defining work-life balance today is no easy task. Literally, anyone can define what they think work-life balance should be and they may be right. In the last decade, the term ‘’work-life balance” has gained a lot of press, especially in the workplace as side discussions between staff members and their disgruntled family members. Work-life balance is a term used for the idea that you need time for both work and other aspects of life, whether those are family-related or personal interests. Remember the popular saying ‘all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy?’ 

Digital integration encourages an “always-on” culture blurring the line between work and personal life, with numerous people claiming they really can’t place a tag on when work ends and their personal life responsibilities and hobbies kick off in the day as most times these are done interchangeably during the course of the day. For example, the Popular instant messaging app, WhatsApp was once regarded as a personal tool for interacting with friends and family has fast become a business tool for many with the Facebook-owned platform increasing capacity to add more contacts in a group and launching a business model of the app in 2019. 

Defining work-life balance involves looking at how working people manage time spent at and outside of work. The methods an individual uses to juggle all their work and life demands constitute their work-life balance. Many professionals feel stressed and not “balanced” despite consuming numerous articles on how to achieve the perfect work-life balance mix. A widespread misunderstanding is that a good work-life balance is determined by how well you do professionally. Yet a lot of people succeed professionally at the sacrifice of a balanced personal life. 

Why Is A Healthy Work-Life Balance Important? 

Work-life balance is a necessity, not a luxury. Maintaining a work-life balance is not only important for job satisfaction, but it can also help for more personal productivity. While the effects of a deteriorating personal life may not be immediately apparent, they gradually weigh on the mind and may eventually lead to harmful habits and general dissatisfaction. Let’s look at how work-life balance can be achieved in 5 steps for personal and business growth; 

1. Set Realistic Goals

We get that you want to be the employee of the year and get the biggest recommendation from the C-suite, you won’t achieve that if you keep setting unrealistic targets for yourself and faltering. Then you’d not only be battling with work-life balance, but you’d also need to do regular checks on your mental health. My daily morning ritual begins with a to-do checklist time-boxed in my e-calendar so I can track my activities for the day. With this approach, I can easily gauge the scope of the day’s job and personal responsibilities. Toward the end of each day, I take some time to assess my progress; jotting all my excesses and thinking through how to solve them so it doesn’t become repetitive. As a result, I was able to figure out what went wrong, what took too much time to accomplish, etc, and devise a plan to fix it. Be intentional, dream big but be realistic and accept responsibility for your mistakes, it’s important to recognize that you’ll make a few mistakes in the process of learning. Also, don’t forget to solicit the assistance of your colleagues, who can serve as priceless resources. No one is an island of knowledge! 

2. Customize your Workspace

Your workspace environment matters a lot to how you do your best work and the best person to put together a perfect work environment is you; You know yourself better than anyone else. In order to make your job easier, whether you’re working from home or making the commute to the office every day, you should customize your space to fit your needs (as long as it doesn’t inconvenience your colleagues) and get all tools you need to help you operate better and efficiently. 

I prefer to work in the office because it eliminates external distractions and provides easy collaborative access with my colleagues. Thanks to COVID-19, we all had to get used to work-from-home and hybrid modes since those were available alternatives. To improve work efficiency, investing in certain office-like household items like a comfortable chair, laptop stands, and other devices that allow you to work for long periods of time without feeling fatigued is the great for working comfortably from home. 

3.  Aim for Excellence, not Perfection

As your career progresses and your family responsibilities grow, it’s common for your responsibilities to increase. Burnouts can be avoided by letting go of perfectionism — don’t come for me yet, I know what you’re thinking. 

According to experts, as life becomes more complicated, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain the habit of perfectionism, both neurologically and mentally. It is better to aim for excellence rather than perfection. By aiming for perfection, you set goals so unrealistic that they become impossible to reach and you never feel satisfied. Instead, strive for excellence, the difference between perfection and excellence is that with excellence, you accept failure and mistakes and you learn from them and use your learnings to advise your next steps so you don’t make those mistakes again. 

Also Read: Five Benefits of Using Cloud-Based Software for MSMEs

4. Have a Priority List

It is possible that this is the most essential factor to finishing projects on time. Setting your priorities helps you stay focused throughout the day, whether you use sticky notes, a notebook, or a mobile notepad. 

Have you met or known anyone that always takes some work home and is awake till almost midnight to finish up the day’s tasks? As work-centric and responsible as that seems, it also shows that person is a terrible time planner. By constantly prioritizing your responsibilities, you’ll be able to carve out more time for things that are important to you outside of work. 

Review constantly and be realistic. Draw up a scale of tasks to be done and schedule a time frame for all the tasks, do well to stick to your timing even when you have a pending gist with your colleague or want to follow that juicy twitter trend. Personally, I use Eisenhower’s matrix to prioritize my list of tasks or agenda items by first categorizing those items according to their urgency and importance. (see diagram 

 below) 

To properly utilize Eisenhower’s matrix, I follow the steps below; 

1. First, I make a list of everything that has to be done
2. Then, I identify the most critical activities; before categorizing them into long and short-term goals.
3. Prioritize based on urgency and importance
4. As a result, these activities should be prioritized according to urgency and importance.
5. Separate conflicting priorities
6. Consider the amount of time and effort it will take to finish the task.
7. Schedule Intermittent Breaks

         5. Don’t rest when you’re burned out, rest when your energy levels are dropping. Take regular pauses throughout the day to keep your energy levels up. Even if you don’t have the time to take a lunch break every day, try to do so. Also, get up and stretch 10–15 minutes a time during your session or take a walk in the park, while listening to some soothing music at least that’s what I do. Because of this, you’ll have more clarity, focus, and productivity. 

While it’s easy to get sucked into the demands of today’s busy workspace, finding the right balance between your work and personal life is very critical to long-term success. Ignoring it can be likened to refusing to service a frequently used car — it’ll eventually break down. The best lesson I learned recently, is that ‘’Resting won’t slow you down, it will take you far.’’ Fortunately, there’s never a bad time to start and the five steps listed above can serve as all you need to get started. 

You should not worry about anything the world is adopting. Don’t be afraid to swim against the upstream, be afraid of being the same. Irrespective of what others may say, the pursuit of your dreams must be your major motivation. When we execute what we are interested in, we find ourselves hungry to do it with more dedication, perfection, and passion and that’s what makes our work stand out from the crowd.

According to Steve Jobs, the late Apple co-founder fondly referred to as the Thomas Edison of his time, revealed in a commencement speech at Stanford University in 2005 why he dropped out of college — and why he thought it was one of the best things he ever did; ‘’Stay hungry, stay foolish’’ means that one should never be content with what is, nor consider oneself an expert. There is always more to do/gain (“stay hungry” for knowledge) and more to learn (“stay foolish”, meaning never consider oneself an expert but a fool in order to learn more).

Our Chief Prunedger, Joel Ogunsola was featured on the Goodnews chat where he shared his journey into using technology for development. Read and enjoy the interview below;

What was the turning point for you in your life/career choice?

My career is in two parts. There is the technology part and the development part. The two had different turning points. When I was 13, I started volunteering for local initiatives in Akure. They were very focused on MDGs, and then later came the SDGs. So, we had a lot of community outreaches, events, and awards at the end of the year. I think that the community outreaches were the most impactful because they enabled me to see and learn firsthand what it means for people to have economic challenges and lack access to clinical health and education.

I grew up in Akure, went to a private school, and had access to a computer when I was young. Things were pretty easy to some extent. What still constantly blows my mind to date is the fact that when you look at the way communities are co-located. For example, when you come to Lagos, just somewhere close to the island where you have more than ¼ of Nigeria’s wealth, you have that small community like Makoko on the border, with a high poverty level and lack of access to health. It just keeps me pondering.

It would have made more change if young people in small communities like that had the same access to opportunities and life outcomes as people who live in large gatherings, and that is the development side of the work I do.

On the technology side of it, I studied as a mechanical engineer. Somewhere in between, I knew it was not something I enjoyed. I thought I would love it, so I got into school so excited. But along the way, I said to myself, ‘this is not practical’. I love technology just as a user. It was exciting for me to start to lay my hands on software development tools, mobile applications, etc. What was intriguing was that you could think about something, and you had the power to build that thing.

When I was 17 years old, some of my friends competed in the Microsoft Imagine Cup competition and went to New York. When they returned, they shared their experiences about what was possible with technology. And this was at the point where we were still battling 2G/3G in Nigeria. So, I got interested in how to use technology to build things. I asked myself, ‘how can I use technology to solve world problems?’ I was like, I can use technology to create solutions to problems in society.

I felt I was going to be in technology as a developer. But, after I left University, I went to work with Microsoft, and that changed. Since then, it has been an exciting journey, and I have gone from being part of a company that helps build solutions to solving problems across numerous sectors.

Where did technology and development align in your journey?

Development has always been a big side of me. So when I found technology, my question was ‘what do I use the technology to do?’

We decided to use technology to solve problems. My friends and I competed in the Microsoft Imagine Cup in my final year. We built a maternal-child healthcare solution. Later on, we started our business and built a school element solution. When I decided that I was going to focus on technology, I had already been keenly involved in equitable development in multiple communities. For me, technology then became that vehicle to deliver on my dreams and aspirations around achieving development goals.

What was that one piece of advice that changed your life? 

The one piece of advice is that there is nothing impossible. Nothing. I used to have a boss, he is the country manager for Microsoft, and he would say

‘Think about it, and it is done.

Technology then makes it more accessible. You think about food, then go online and order (from a user perspective). We can think about anything we want to do, and the fact that we can think about it means that we have the innate ability to do it. This has been my most potent driving force. Every day I wake up, I know that all my ideas are valid. Whether it is the best idea to pursue at this particular point is a different conversation entirely. But, knowing that my ideas are valid is a strong driving force every day.

How do you deal with setbacks?

One piece of advice I got from an older friend, the day I lost something and I was really sad was ‘in life, you win some, you lose some.

I did not understand it back then, but I have grown to know that it is just the ordinary course of life. You will win some, and you will lose some.

Now, beyond just realizing that I will lose some, it is about creating a process to understand why we lost some. At every point we lose, I ask myself why did we lose? That helps to ensure that we don’t lose again when faced with that type of challenge next time.

Dealing with setbacks is knowing that there will always be different outcomes for different efforts that we put in. Losing does not mean it is not a good idea or it is impossible. Maybe we didn’t put in the correct type of effort, or we didn’t have the right amount of resources. You know that you don’t always win in life, but it is essential to learn from not winning.

What good news/thing in the world is being overlooked?

As young people, I think the Internet we have is one of the most resourceful tools ever. I have seen the world over the Internet from the comfort of my room. I remember that the most important video I had ever watched was a TED talk that my cousin who had gone to India shared with me. It was a talk about the Sixth Sense. That topic to date blows my mind. As humans, we have five senses. He proved that we have a sixth sense, and that won’t have been possible without technology. 

Way before I started to travel, I had seen everywhere worldwide, learned about culture, and watched documentaries. I have noticed that the Internet is that leveling tool that allows a young person from California and a young person from Ekiti State to access equal opportunities. You can almost learn the same thing if you commit to it and focus on it. 

Would you say that we have harnessed that well enough? 

Yes and No. There’s been a lot of negative sides to it, which is why we have a terrible reputation as a country. At the same time, there are many great things that people have done with the Internet and technology. A perfect example is the entire startup ecosystem we are seeing right now is all off the back of the Internet. So, essentially, I will say that we have accessed and utilized it. But, there continue to be barriers like equitable access. Does everyone have access to the Internet? And similar questions like that. 

What are three things you have done over the years that have made a big difference?

1. I stopped worrying: I think about the issue, and I try to get it done. I think that has helped greatly. 
2. I try to surround myself with a lot of the smartest people: I ensure that my colleagues are brilliant and they know what they are doing, they know that one thing that they do better than I do.
3. I have learned ‘Just Do it. You will never know whether it is the best time or not until you do it. Some innovations are said to have come ahead of their time. Some, they say, arrived at the right time. So, you never know until you do. Just get on with it and do it, and then you will know. 

What’s something that makes you feel hopeful for the future right now?

I am hopeful that young people across different types of communities, regardless of their social standards, have equal access opportunities and similar life outcomes. I am optimistic that in my life, I will be able to see that a child that grows up in Akure has access to similar life outcomes just as a child that grew up in Lagos.

What is the one piece of advice you will give to someone just starting (in your space?)

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

I think those were Steve Jobs’s words. You have to spend every day doubling down on what you have done. There is no foolish idea. Execution of the idea makes the difference. 

What are you reading or listening to currently?

These days I listen to Christian music. I am not very good with podcasts or audiobooks. I read a lot more physical books. I am currently reading Leadership @ Infosys. I am watching a documentary about Micheal Jordan. I love to learn about the stories of successful people across different industries, like Michael Jackson, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, etc. I think that the common denominator is that these people worked hard to build their careers. I believe that learning is a lifelong process. At each level of success, you think you have achieved, some people have done it better.

You have to ensure that you are not living in the shadow of your previous success.

There are some people I consider their success to be a phenomenon, and I want to learn about their journey.

• Culled from All for Development Blog