BehavioralPeople Management

Can you describe your coaching style when it comes to engineers and give an example of how you have applied it?

Engineering Manager

Meta

Icertis

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Udacity

GameStop

Adeppar

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Expert Answer

Anonymous

4 months ago
4.6Exceptional
My coaching style is structured and designed to match engineers interests and preferences.
In our 1:1 we discuss interests and aspirations. From there we can work on career progression, technical development, or learning more about project management, company operations, etc

We analyze situation and have written plan. We take notes about projects where we can try to apply new things and new responsibilities that the person can take on. 
Engineer T was interested to deepen his skills in distributed computing. We worked on a system that resembles Spark . When T shared that we was puzzled with strange occasional performance, I decided to help him to be more comfortable, independent using this system. I prepared by inspecting source code, and found the root cause of his issue. In 1:1 I coached T that we have source code access to the system and showed him how to find how the system works. Further I let T to produce the fix for the issue and apply it to production. Finally I encouraged T to make presentation and share with others how to use source code to solve similar issues.

Result stretched far beyond fixing a complex bug. T became unafraid of inspecting source code of a large distributed system. He would be able to do that again if situation requires. T presented the issue, his approach and methods to handle similar cases in large knowledge sharing meeting. T's image improved in the team.

I would like to address other methods I use:
- Pair engineers with mentors and coaches
- Organize knowledge sharing sessions ( At my current company I organized 4 conference like knowledge sharing sessions, that resulted in our team presenting in all hands meeting in the company)
- Facilitating attending and presenting at industry conerences (ie Databricks DATA+AI, Amazon R:invent)
- Sharing my experience when applicable in 1:1
- Suggesting and making space for engineers to learn more through online classes

Anonymous

22 days ago
3.4Strong
My philiophy around coaching style is it dependes on the situtaion - At xyz - I had a situtation where in I had to resolve a conflit between my Sr. Dev and a DBA, I took this as a mentoring moment and coached Sr. Dev to be more collobrative and present the facts insted of being dismissive and taking a high ground. 
At the same time my coaching style changes when I am dealing with a Junior Dev - during the implementation phase I would probe and ask them to come up with a better solution emporing them to be better developers
  • Can you describe your coaching style when it comes to engineers and give an example of how you have applied it?
  • Can you discuss your coaching style and how you approach mentoring and developing engineers within your team?
  • Can you provide an example of a time when you successfully used your coaching skills to help an engineer grow and improve in their role?
  • How do you provide constructive feedback to engineers in a way that is helpful and encouraging?
  • What strategies do you find to be effective for motivating and engaging engineers and helping them reach their full potential?
  • Can you describe a time when you had to address a performance issue with an engineer and how you approached the situation?
  • How do you create opportunities for engineers to gain new skills and take on additional responsibilities within your team?
  • Can you discuss your approach to setting goals and objectives for engineers and helping them achieve those goals?
  • How do you handle conflicts or disagreements between engineers and help them find common ground?
  • Can you discuss a situation where you had to help an engineer overcome a particular challenge and how you supported them during the process?
  • How do you foster a culture of continuous learning and growth within your team and help engineers grow in their careers over time?
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Interview question asked to Engineering Managers interviewing at App Annie, DuckDuckGo, The Trade Desk and others: Can you describe your coaching style when it comes to engineers and give an example of how you have applied it?.