It is sad that being an engineering manager in the vast majority of tech companies is about politics not about engineering. A lot of engineers who opt for the management root learn this the very hard way.
The big persuasion missing from the list is persuading, both upwards and downwards, who should work on what.
It sounds super cynical but it is important to park the unproductive people on the unimportant work else nothing works. It is usually counterproductive to actually release people (the EM is rewarded for number of reports above all else) etc so you have to put the good people on what is important and somehow lend the bad people to the projects and competing teams to hamper them etc.
This is a strange take to me. What do you think engineering management _is_? It's fundamentally a political role. This reads to me like "it's sad that most football managers never get to kick a ball".
I'm sure there are places where that job is primarily about engineering... But that's just a place that doesn't actually need EMs! Maybe you are saying this is the ideal org, and yeah I probably agree. So I guess this is just a semantics thing.
This is why it's essential for any enterprise that wants to keep long term growth going to build processes to catch and weed out stakeholders and employees that prioritize playing politics over actions that will further the progress of the company.
This is the biggest difference between companies that fade out, and the ones that keep being innovative as they grow.
Inaction in this regard leads to the company becoming top-heavy with people that have no clue on how to drive the company forwards, they only know how to climb the ladder.
I saw a team of misfits being assembled and "parked" this way on a project everyone expected to fail. To everyone's surprise they dragged the thing to completion and an unexpected revenue stream.
Are we talking about the colonization of Australia?
BTW I think that most misfits are such not because they're bad engineers, but because they're put in the wrong role with the wrong people. By sending them to a completely new project with completely new people under completely new rules, you give them "a second chance".
The big persuasion missing from the list is persuading, both upwards and downwards, who should work on what.
It sounds super cynical but it is important to park the unproductive people on the unimportant work else nothing works. It is usually counterproductive to actually release people (the EM is rewarded for number of reports above all else) etc so you have to put the good people on what is important and somehow lend the bad people to the projects and competing teams to hamper them etc.
Sad but super true.