Donโt take what your Engineering Manager tells you as a mandate or absolute law. Challenge her/him; itโs expected and you will grow.
That would be the main takeaway for todayโs issue.
On this occasion, I will share a history that happened to me, so you do not make the same mistake I did.
๐๐ปโโ๏ธ What happened?
Once upon a time, my Engineering Manager told me:
Marcos, please, take look into this issue, the Release Team is saying our services are crashing in the brand-new production environment.
To give more context, the Release Team was deploying all the services of our product in a brand-new cluster. That cluster had some characteristics that made it special in many dimensions.
The services that my team owned at that time were crashing, and not able to back to life. This meant that the features that our services provide were not available in that cluster.
๐ซก What did I do?
Aye-aye captain!
I just jumped into the cluster to take a look.
I found the issue pretty fast, actually. The problem was a configuration property that was wrong set in our services due to the special characteristics of that cluster.
Solving the issue was pretty fast as well. In a matter of 10 minutes, the issue was solved, and our beautiful services were purring like a charm.
Butโฆ but, should have solved that problem?
๐ง What I would have to do?
Wait a minuteโฆ
What Marcos from the past did not have loaded in his memory at that time was that, in that special production environment, our services should not be working. Actually, our services should not be on the list of applications to be running in that cluster at all. It was a decision made, and agreed upon with the Release Team, sometime before this issue.
What I should have done at that time was think about whether that issue was something expected. Stopping to think would have led me to remember the decision made some time ago.
As a Software Engineer, you are expected to think critically and challenge decisions from upper management, especially if you hold a role with more responsibilities. This is part of why you were hired. Try to not be a pain for your manager though, and target properly your challenges.
By doing so, you demonstrate that you care about the companyโs goals and the balance of efforts, which increases your credibility with peers and managers, helping you grow as a professional.
โจ Takeaways
I hope you enjoy this short and stick-to-the-point essay.
Letโs wrap up with some takeaways:
Think before doing anything.
Think again, and question: does it make sense? Does it bring value?
Your Engineer Manager expects you to challenge the status quo to improve systems and processes.
This is a good mechanism to grow in your organization.
Photo David Clode in Unsplash
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๐๐ง ๐บ๐ฐ๐ถ ๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ซ๐ฐ๐บ๐ฆ๐ฅ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ช๐ด ๐ฑ๐ฐ๐ด๐ต, ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ๐ฏ ๐ค๐ญ๐ช๐ค๐ฌ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ ๐. ๐๐ต ๐ฉ๐ฆ๐ญ๐ฑ๐ด!
๐๐ง ๐บ๐ฐ๐ถ ๐ฌ๐ฏ๐ฐ๐ธ ๐ด๐ฐ๐ฎ๐ฆ๐ฐ๐ฏ๐ฆ ๐ฆ๐ญ๐ด๐ฆ ๐ธ๐ช๐ญ๐ญ ๐ฃ๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ฆ๐ง๐ช๐ต ๐ง๐ณ๐ฐ๐ฎ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ช๐ด, โป๏ธ ๐ด๐ฉ๐ข๐ณ๐ฆ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ช๐ด ๐ฑ๐ฐ๐ด๐ต.
Thanks for sharing. To add to it, I think this situation is best described as identifying the real problem vs symptom. The symptom makes it look like a technical issue, but the real problem is the misalignment between teams. Just some thoughts.