DEV Community: Marco Poletto

From Engineer to Engineering Manager

Marco Poletto — Tue, 13 Dec 2022 09:08:00 +0000

Introduction

As a software engineer, the idea of moving up to engineering management may seem daunting. After all, the technical skills that have brought you success in your current role may not necessarily translate to the leadership and strategic thinking required in a management position.
However, with the right mindset and approach, transitioning from software engineer to engineering manager can be a rewarding and fulfilling career move. Not only will it challenge you in new ways, but it also has the potential to greatly impact the success of your team and the broader organization.
In this blog post, we will explore the skills and traits necessary for making the move from software engineer to engineering manager, as well as strategies for successfully navigating the transition.

Why Make the Move to Engineering Management?

There are several reasons why software engineers may want to consider moving up to engineering management. Some of the key benefits include:

Greater impact on the success of the team and organization: As an engineering manager, you will have the opportunity to lead and guide your team to achieve its goals and objectives. This can be incredibly rewarding, as you will be directly contributing to the success of the organization.
A broader range of responsibilities and challenges: As a software engineer, you may have found that your role has become somewhat routine and predictable. Moving into engineering management can provide a new set of challenges and responsibilities, such as leading and motivating a team, making strategic decisions, and managing budgets and resources.
Higher earning potential: Engineering managers are typically paid more than software engineers, as they are responsible for leading and managing a team. This can be a significant financial incentive for those looking to advance their careers.
Opportunities for personal and professional growth: Transitioning to engineering management can provide opportunities for personal and professional growth, as you will be challenged to develop new skills and competencies. This can help you to build a more diverse and well-rounded skill set, which can open up new career opportunities in the future.

What Skills and Traits are Required for Engineering Management?

As an engineering manager, you will be responsible for leading and motivating a team of engineers. This requires a different set of skills than those you have developed as a software engineer.
To be effective in your new role, you will need to develop your leadership abilities, such as:

Technical expertise: Engineering managers must have a strong understanding of the principles and practices of engineering, as well as the ability to apply these principles to solve complex technical problems.
Leadership skills: Engineering managers must be able to lead and motivate teams of engineers, and effectively communicate with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
Strategic thinking: Engineering managers must be able to identify and prioritize key goals and objectives, and develop and implement effective plans to achieve these goals.
Decision-making skills: Engineering managers must be able to make informed, data-driven decisions that align with the overall goals of the organization.
Financial acumen: Engineering managers must have a strong understanding of financial principles and practices, and be able to effectively manage budgets and resources to achieve desired outcomes.
Project management skills: Engineering managers must be able to effectively manage complex engineering projects, including planning, execution, and monitoring of progress.
Problem-solving skills: Engineering managers must be able to identify and analyze complex technical problems, and develop effective solutions to address these issues.
Collaboration and teamwork: Engineering managers must be able to work effectively with teams of engineers, as well as other stakeholders within the organization, to achieve common goals.
Communication skills: Engineering managers must be able to effectively communicate with team members, stakeholders, and other key individuals within the organization to ensure that all parties are informed and on track to achieve desired outcomes.
Attention to detail: Engineering managers must be able to carefully review and analyze complex technical information to ensure that all aspects of a project are properly planned and executed.

How to Transition from Software Engineer to Engineering Manager

Transitioning from software engineer to engineering manager can be a challenging and rewarding career move. To successfully navigate the transition, you will need to develop a clear plan and strategy for making the move.

Prioritize learning and development: As an engineering manager, you will be responsible for guiding and developing your team. Invest in yourself by seeking out opportunities for professional development and continuing education in leadership and management skills.
Build strong relationships with your team: Take the time to get to know your team members, their strengths and areas for improvement, and what motivates them. This will help you provide effective support and guidance as they navigate their own career paths.
Communicate openly and transparently: As a manager, it is important to be approachable and open to feedback from your team. Encourage open and honest communication by setting clear expectations, providing regular updates and progress reports, and listening actively to your team's concerns and suggestions.
Be proactive in problem-solving: Engineering managers are often faced with complex and challenging problems. Develop a proactive approach to problem-solving by staying on top of industry trends and emerging technologies, and seeking out solutions that align with the goals and objectives of your team and organization.
Seek out mentorship and support: As a new engineering manager, you may face challenges and obstacles that are unfamiliar to you. Seek out mentors and supportive colleagues who can provide guidance and support as you navigate your new role. This may include seeking out formal mentorship programs or simply networking with other engineering managers within your organization or industry.

Conclusion

In conclusion, making the move from engineer to engineering manager can be a challenging but rewarding experience. It requires a shift in mindset and skillset, but with the right attitude and preparation, it can lead to new opportunities for growth and leadership within the engineering field. As an engineering manager, you will have the chance to not only continue solving technical problems, but also to guide and develop your team, drive project success, and shape the direction of your organization. While it may not be an easy transition, it is one that can ultimately lead to a fulfilling and impactful career.

Google drops shared resource-cache

Marco Poletto — Mon, 19 Oct 2020 09:01:52 +0000

Starting with Chrome 86, Google has decided to remove a feature often leverage by frontend developers: shared resource-cache.
If you are not entirely sure of what it is, let me help you.

Let's take as an example Roboto font referenced from google font. Roboto is a very famous font and used on the vast majority of material design websites and applications. Until now you were able to download this font once from the first visited website and then to use the same cached version for every identical HTTP call even if coming from an entirely different domain or application. This feature is called shared resource-cache and is going to be rarer by the day.

Now that Chrome is joining Safari on this change, and that Edge has become Chromium-based, we are going to have the vast majority of browsers don't support it anymore. Only Firefox is holding on for now.

Why are they changing this feature?
The response is simple, privacy and security. This technique is allowing dodgy ways to track the users' history by sampling what is in their cache.
For example, if a website calls Netflix font and obtains a fast response, knows that the user has been visiting Netflix lately because the font is cached in the browser. It is possible to trace down every kind of website using this method, including Twitter, Facebook, etc. If the website leaves a footprint, and almost every single one does, can be somewhat traced down, and it is a massive hole in privacy for the final user.

And now what are the effects of this change?
The main effect is more privacy by breaking these tracking techniques. Still, the collateral effect is that from now on, users have to download the same resource for every single website they are visiting instead of being able to use what they have in cache already. This change will result in longer loading times and TTI (Time To Interactive) significantly affecting all developers focussing on website/app performance.
If your KPI revolves around performances, keep an eye on HTTP requests and how to change them based on this change.

Source: Google Developers

Refreshing an "old" way of doing React

Marco Poletto — Wed, 14 Oct 2020 13:16:25 +0000

-- Originally written on my blog (https://www.poletto.dev/blog/refreshing-an-old-way-of-doing-react) --

In the last few days, ok almost a week, I've been busy trying to regain al my skills and memory in React without hooks.
I didn't think it would ever happen but using hooks for basically everything, negatively impacted on my speed in using React "the old way."
Do you remember those things called Classes, lifecycles and Redux? I almost didn't. And I've discovered it "the hard way".

As part of keeping myself employable and green with the huge frontend ecosystem, I usually start a new side project trying to use one "old" technology and one new for learning and for keeping knowledge fresh as much as possible.

Waiting for my next primary assignment at my current job as a consultant, I've picked up some side projects with many different technologies. I've rewritten my portfolio three times. Two in Vue using Gridsome and Nuxt and one in React using Hooks and Gatsby.
Although it was a good exercise, my portfolio is an easy beast to tame, and it doesn't offer enough challenge for keeping myself ready for new demanding projects.

For these reasons, I've chosen to create a proof of concept of an eCommerce website built with React and Redux using all the techniques available before the release of hooks.
You may ask why. Aren't class-based components and Redux agonising towards death?
Almost. There still are cases where you would start a new project using class-based components and especially Redux, but, most of the time, it is a matter of maintaining projects that are already in place.
Nowadays, it is indeed easier to refactor a React component from class-based to functional with hooks, definitely more comfortable than migrate an application from jQuery to React. Still, big projects will take years to migrate to newer code if rewritten at all.
For these cases, it is still useful to practice with Redux and classes in React for being able to be proficient and quick on all kind of React projects, even older ones.

This project has been challenging, I was a bit rusty on class-based components, but the worst part was Redux. I never really liked this tool, I find it over-complicated and with a lot of verbosities. Still, I get the importance it has and the kind of situation in which it can be useful.
On the other hand, features like React-hooks and tools like Apollo cache start to be pretty stable, and they offer comparable solutions at a fraction of the complexity. But this is a topic for another blog.

I have tried, as stated on my self imposed challenge, to keep the level of difficulty high enough to become a challenge and to allow me to simulate a real-world case scenario of using these techniques.
I ended up using, of course, class-based components, Redux, Redux-persist for keeping the cart state, Sass scoped per component and Firebase for authentication.

If you are interested in looking at the way I've tackled the project, please have a look at the Github's repo.
And here is a working version.

How to create simple tabs system with VueJS

Marco Poletto — Tue, 30 Jul 2019 16:50:17 +0000

Today I want to share with you and easy way to build a simple tab system using VueJS.

As a starter I am using Vue/cli 3

Instructions

for installing vue-cli:

npm i -g @vue/cli

for creating a new project:

vue create <project-name>

for running the project:

cd <project-name>
npm run serve

YouTube

Get the code

GitHub

polettoweb / vue-tabs

Simple example of tabs created with VueJS

vue-tabs

Project setup

npm install

Compiles and hot-reloads for development

npm run serve

Compiles and minifies for production

npm run build

Run your tests

npm run test

Lints and fixes files

npm run lint

Customize configuration

See Configuration Reference.

View on GitHub

CodeSandbox

How to create animated multicolour border on element

Marco Poletto — Fri, 19 Jul 2019 13:18:51 +0000

Here a quick example of how you can create an animated multi colour border effect to you element using CSS only

and here the youtube video and my channel:

How to automatically switch text color based on background's brightness

Marco Poletto — Wed, 26 Jun 2019 11:42:44 +0000

Here a quick example of how you can programmatically change text color, for example of a button, based on the element's background color.

The function take in account the brightness of the background and switch automatically text color.

VueJS function API RCS phase

Marco Poletto — Fri, 21 Jun 2019 07:24:42 +0000

RCS phase for the #vuejs intrerpretation of React hooks. If you're using or interested in VueJS, please have a look.

As Gregg Pollack and Adam Jahr said: "Don't be that guy" :-)

vuejs / rfcs

RFCs for substantial changes / feature additions to Vue core

Vue RFCs

What is an RFC?

The "RFC" (request for comments) process is intended to provide a consistent and controlled path for new features to enter the framework.

Many changes, including bug fixes and documentation improvements can be implemented and reviewed via the normal GitHub pull request workflow.

Some changes though are "substantial", and we ask that these be put through a bit of a design process and produce a consensus among the Vue core team and the community.

The RFC life-cycle

An RFC goes through the following stages:

Pending: when the RFC is submitted as a PR.
Active: when an RFC PR is merged and undergoing implementation.
Landed: when an RFC's proposed changes are shipped in an actual release.
Rejected: when an RFC PR is closed without being merged.

Pending RFC List

When to follow this process

You need to follow this process if you intend to make "substantial"…

View on GitHub

javascript #dontbethatguy

Copy text on click with JS

Marco Poletto — Thu, 20 Jun 2019 12:21:20 +0000

Yesterday I've stumble upon a necessity of copy some text into clipboard with JavaScript and I thought it might be useful to share the method I've used with everyone else.

In detail I had to copy on click some hex value on colored swatches and I had to do it in plain JS.

My approach uses the "event" that's automatically passed on every click.

It selects the text inside the clicked element (event.target)
And copies it into the clipboard.
For demo purposes, it opens an alert box notifying the hex code selected

I found it particularly useful for sharing colors to a designer, but can, of course, be used in many other ways (e.g. dashboards, form pre-filling on click, etc.)