Sebastiano Armeli

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Published in

Better Programming

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6 min read

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9 hours ago

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A critical milestone in the ever-evolving engineering management career is the transition to managing managers. This milestone often coincides with stepping into the “Senior Engineering Manager” role, particularly in mid to large tech companies.

One key forum you will set up when you become a manager of managers is the weekly Staff Meeting. It’s a meeting with your direct reports, who are often engineering managers themselves. This meeting is pivotal for maintaining alignment, tackling pressing issues, and steering strategic initiatives.

A Staff Meeting should be more than just a rundown of daily operations; let’s dive into the critical topics that can elevate these meetings from routine to remarkable.

Essential Topics for Effective Staff Meetings

Strategy Alignment

Strategic discussions form a significant part of staff meetings. Company goals and priorities can shift based on market trends, customer feedback, and business performance. For example, the top H2 (Second Half of the Year) company priorities frequently differ from the top H1 (First Half of the Year) priorities. Goals within a department also change based on the company’s priorities; hence there is a constant need for revision and adaptation to changes.

During Staff Meetings, you will want to include high-level discussions on current priorities and future objectives and tactics. You promote a sense of ownership and strategic thinking by involving your managers in these discussions.

For example, one of the new company priorities is improving the quality excellence of all the features. Consider discussing how to achieve this in your area and for the features you own. A manager might take the lead around decreasing the number of incidents, and another might take the lead in increasing the number of monitoring dashboards and alerts for their back-end services.

Regularly revisiting and aligning strategies ensures the engineering team remains agile and responsive to evolving…