> An engineering manager's job is: take long-term ownership for the performance of the team
This is a rather naive, mid-level management-style take.
The real EM job is to represent the team to the company, to be aligned with company priorities, and to be a backstop for the team. In other words, being the leader - the face, the prioritize, and the helper of the team.
Performance-style nonsense is what is used in warehouses and factories where the manager is responsible for number of units produced.
But in software, the goal is NOT to produce more but to produce correct/investigate correct/and maintain correct.
As such, EM is very different from warehouse-style management.
I'm not quite sure where you're getting "performance = maximizing units of output" from my post, as the whole point was the difference between squeezing out a little more code vs. keeping the team on track doing actually valuable stuff. Either way, I think we mostly agree here: the EM is the face of the team who makes sure the team, as a unit, is doing valuable work as a sustainable pace that's understood as such internally.
However, to be clear, software teams, engineers, and engineering managers are absolutely evaluated on their performance, which is a complex and subjective metric, and the manager is generally the one held responsible for it at the team level.
> However, to be clear, software teams, engineers, and engineering managers are absolutely evaluated on their performance,
Yes, and no one said that this kind of evaluation has produced long term success. It has widely been recognized that when upper management is more involved in evaluation rather than leading teams of managers themselves, they address issues and market conditions too late. Thus, affecting businesses negatively over and over.
In other words, managers are being asked to NOT perform to certain metrics/evals but to make choices that benefit the company - even if it falls outside any evaluation rubric.
Pardon my cynicism, but this doesn't really change anything. These companies are still evaluating their employees, just informally. They are still promoting and firing people. There are still teams who are doing well and teams that are not. There are teams that picked the right goals and met them, and teams that failed to deliver on their promises for yet another quarter. There are still teams with happy stakeholders and teams that infuriate everyone whom they interact with.
It doesn't matter how you measure it or try to ignore it, the buck still stops with the manager of each team.
There is plenty of words written on what the difference is between leading and managing.
True leaders are role models, not higher-ups, the ones where authority comes from competence, not position, showing the way, not just telling what to do, facilitating self-organization, giving direction, prioritizing, giving vision and perspective, not orders, fostering intrinsic motivation.
This is a rather naive, mid-level management-style take.
The real EM job is to represent the team to the company, to be aligned with company priorities, and to be a backstop for the team. In other words, being the leader - the face, the prioritize, and the helper of the team.
Performance-style nonsense is what is used in warehouses and factories where the manager is responsible for number of units produced.
But in software, the goal is NOT to produce more but to produce correct/investigate correct/and maintain correct.
As such, EM is very different from warehouse-style management.