Ask HN: Managers of HN, how do you track IC progress

[higgins]

Hi Engineering Managers of HN!

I'm looking for tooling—systems, methodologies and software—you use to successfully manage your engineering team.

Strategies I've found helpful:

- One shared google doc per engineer - Regular, short check-ins (can be async) to track progress against team and personal goals - Nudge on opportunities for growth (budget spend, domain ownership, etc)

The wider company is encouraged to use a shared tool (https://www.small-improvements.com), so I'll need to migrate to that but I'm interested in what other tools you've found successful!

[pcbmaker20]

Regular 1:1s Looking at the PRs Talking to them daily

[noir_lord]

Exactly this - there is no technical solution to a people problem and as a manager keeping people on track and knowing when to help get it back on track is a people problem.

When I worked in office, I got into the habit of just eating lunch with my team - always thought it was weird that the seniors (actually leads anywhere else) went to lunch together separately from the devs and the juniors, often we'd go a week without discussing work and I'd never bring it up (lunch time is lunch time and been off the clock is good for a reset) but more than once something that would potentially balloon into a major problem got headed off because someone mentioned it over lunch.

Generally speaking just be someone who is comfortable hearing "bad news" on progress - that is make it "OK, how do we solve this together" problem not a recrimination problem because you want people to be able to tell you when things have gone sideways when they know and not when it's so sideways they can't avoid telling you :).

[higgins]

great insight on the lunch (harder for remote team, but there are other opportunities!)

> make it "OK, how do we solve this together"

excellent framing! a big fan of "pair coding" or "synchronous code reviews" when we catch this signal

thanks for sharing!

[noir_lord]

When I was teenager (more years than I want to count) my mum went to Uni to do social science since I was a computer geek and she very much wasn't (and isn't) she used to write her essays longhand and I'd type them up for her/proof read them and I'd read her books if they seemed interesting - so much of what came up in those books was applicable to been an effective manager later - Framing as a concept goes back the 70's (it's older than me :D)

It was a cheat sheet to life in many ways.