Managerial Duties
Technical Leadership
An engineering manager is expected to provide technical leadership to both the engineers as well as the Product team. Determining the technical feasibility of a feature is important for helping the Product team determine where they can add that feature on the product road map. Engineers also need that technical leadership in order to make sure that the engineering efforts are heading in the right direction.
When possible, the engineers should be encouraged to solve the challenges they face on their own. Management is there to guide the team but the success should ultimately lay at the feet of the engineers. If an engineer can help the Product team with a technical assessment, they should be encouraged to do so.
All-Hands Moderator
The All-Hands is run by you and is useful in many different areas of the organization. Use this link for a more in-depth description.
Deployments
All deployments are done by an engineer manager. This allows for the manager to do one last review of the pull request before it goes live. As most engineers tend to focus on the problems that are immediately in front of them, a manager is in a position to understand that there might be wide reaching ramifications that the engineer is not considering.
Project Management
Acting as a project manager, an engineer manager is well placed to understand the progress that the team is making. This helps with maintaining the necessary mental model required to guide the team along with being able to assist the Product team with any inquiries they may have.
Some projects come over as a single ticket asking for a feature. To set the team up for failure, it is wise to break the project down into smaller tickets that lay out the broad strokes that fall along the lines of front-end / back-end work. From there the engineers are strongly encouraged to break down those tasks further.
Remote Management Best Practices
It is important to point out one important detail that relates to the makeup of the engineering team: all engineers are contract workers from Upwork. They are more accustomed to working on a single project for 1-3 months, and then moving on to the next thing. A variety of bad habits have to be unlearned so that they can adopt the proper mindset that is needed when working full-time at a fast-paced start-up.
Promoting Ownership
Working with full-time remote contract engineers, an engineering manager might soon discover that those engineers may not have the same sense of ownership on a project as they would a full-time, salaried employee. Cultural differences may also play into this. "The most I have worked on a project is 3 months" is a phrase that may be heard from time to time. Contract work is typically short and quick. In an effort to create a team where engineers feel like they are having a meaningful impact, promoting ownership amongst the engineers is a vital part of that process.
When faced with a difficult challenge, it is tempting for the engineering management team to concoct a solution which is given to the team to implement. In some instances, there is no other choice. However, when a team comes up with that solution on their own (with a little bit of help from their managers), they will feel a sense of ownership that one does not get when following a set of instructions. An increased sense of ownership can lead to better results in terms of software solutions along with a happy engineer who wants to stay with the team long term.
This can require patience as varying levels of skill and experience make it difficult for remote teams to fully understand the scope of the problem in front of them. If a tight deadline is looming, by all means give them the map and send them on their way. But if time permits, an effective manager will ask the right questions at the right time, helping to guide the team from darkness into the light.