Skip to Main Content
Talk Intermediate

Life as an Engineering Manager

Proposal status is Rejected
Session Description

A manager is not only a manager, they are an artist who has learnt how to juggle all the chainsaws that are just flying in the air and demanding attention!


The change from an individual contributor to an Engineering manager is full of myths, pitfalls, and hidden traps. It’s not unusual for folks to become managers, and a year or two later realise it’s not what they thought it was going to be after going through difficult times and back.


In this talk, I will talk about


- What does an EM do?

- Why did I decide to take this plunge?

- Why becoming an EM is not what you thought it may be?

- How is the performance of an EM measured? 

- In hindsight, how do I look back at my decision of transitioning to an EM role?


After working as an individual contributor at various levels for 8+ years, in mid 2022, I started to read about “what do EM’s do“. It seemed very “exciting” and then I started to think about “why I wanted to become an EM”. My reasons seemed to be “good” ones and hence I decided to take the plunge. Have been working as an EM now for 18+ months and looking back at things, can in a very “candid” manner talk about above bullet points in a way which will help engineers as well as aspiring EM’s. 


Session Categories

FOSS

Speakers

Puneet Khushwani
Puneet Khushwani Sr. Engineering Manager

The ethos of my career has always been "Never Stop Building". The six years I spent with my first employer was a crazy rollercoaster ride, building several products all in different domains: consumer e-commerce, private label furniture, social media application, and a SAAS product to help companies run crypto-backed token economies.


In 2020, I joined Coupa Software, we are a leader of the Business Spend Management industry. Couple of years ago, I transitioned to an Engineering Manager role and now am supporting one of the Platform teams from our office in Pune, India.


Last year, I was at Ruby Conf, India to talk about “From Startup to Scale Up: How to Scale Engineering Teams” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WlkzRjpTSI) and then gave technical talk on “Finding a needle in the haystack - Debugging performance issues” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvC1ZyUIO_s) at RubyConf, San Diego also. Both these were well received by the audience and will use my experience from them to make this one even more “engaging” & "relatable".