Have Engineering Leaders Become Too Hands-off? | Braze's Francisco Trindade

0:00I think we have been very against micromanagement. I think if you want to be hired as a manager anywhere, the only thing you cannot in the interview is that you're going to be a micromanager. That doesn't get you a job in tech at all, which is good. But I think in that process and in that growth phase and in the process of doing it, I think we kind of bent a bit too much the other side of the thing. And we just didn't put a lot of attention or as an industry in general, I was like, how do we make teams be effective? In today's fast-paced business landscape, the success of your business relies on the success of your engineering team.

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1:53Welcome back to Lead Dev New York with Dev Interrupted, where we are about to have an incredible interview with Francisco Trendade. Welcome. Thanks, Connor. Thanks for having me. I'm very excited to have you on the show because I have to say my wife is a huge fan of the company you work at, Braze. Francisco's a director of engineering there. Welcome to the show. And I'm excited to dive into your topic about how to make engineers work better together, which is something that I think we touch on but maybe don't directly speak to. I'd love to start with that and kind of see what the framework is that you think will help engineering teams work better together.

2:29But it's an interesting topic, I think, mostly because I think there's been like a shift in the industry in the past decade. And then I think we're seeing another shift happening now. And just explaining my thinking, I think like we as an industry in terms of tech, I think we live this kind of like, I don't know, maybe 10 or 20 years of just like the look, the search for talent. Right. So a lot of that was kind of like, how can you grow organizations? How can you hire faster? How can you hire, like train the more talent? And that, of course, led us to a position where we have focused a lot of individuals in teams, like in how to kind of create good environments for engineers to grow and how to kind of let individuals flourish in teams.

3:09And if you look into material from maybe a few years ago, there's like this quote, just let the engineers do the work. That's all you have to do as a manager. And that's kind of, I think, some of the mentality that we had. Also, I think as an industry, I think, and rightly so, I think we have been very against micromanagement, right? I think if you want to be a kind of, going to be hired as a manager anywhere, like the only thing you cannot hint in the interview is that you're going to be like a micromanager. That's like, that doesn't get your job in tech at all, which is good. But I think like in that process and in that kind of like growth phase and in the process of doing it, I think we kind of like bent a bit too much to the kind of like the other side of the thing.

3:49And we just didn't put a lot of attention or as an industry in general, I was like, how do we make teams be effective? And I think we kind of like, we think let go of some of the learnings in the past, of the past, but like to kind of help like work around teams. So a lot of like what I try to talk about and to kind of like work with teams that I work and kind of like managers that I kind of work with are really about like focusing on effectiveness. How do you kind of like you as a manager become a leader that can like actually drive effectiveness in your team and then create an environment where your engineers can like fulfill their potential because they are in a in a very productive environment.

4:27So let's say you're one of these, you know, directors of engineering who have spent years now in an environment driven by, to your point, these enterprise companies like Google that have said, I'm going to acquire all the talent. I'm going to really just bring in folks and hold on to them. And now you realize you need to make the shift where, OK, I haven't spent enough time making my team as effective as it could be. How do you get started? I think there's like three main kind of aspects that I think about. One, you need to value team results of individual results. I think, again, and that's like...

4:57Did we deliver the feature holistic of the team or did it not just did that PR go well? Yeah, and I think like we, I mean, there's like, there's like, of course, like everything on this topic is a spectrum, right? Like there's not right or wrong. Like it's just like you can go either way. But I think like there are companies and teams that focus too much in terms of like, has even like in promotions and rewards of like how do you promote individuals is by individual work right so then you kind of focus the idea that like you disincentivize collaboration you kind of say oh you have to have an idea and then write a doc and then implement it and then do everything yourself and that is the path to be promoted so if you do that then of course like people are gonna that famous quote of like uh tell me how you're gonna reward me and i'll tell how I'm going to behave.

5:44So the first thing I would say for like this manager leader that's thinking about that is thinking, okay, how do you value and make your team understand that you value team results? And I think to your point is saying, okay, if we deliver a project, like how have we worked together as a team to deliver the project? And like how would we value the different roles in that team, right? Like maybe there is someone going to lead, be the technical lead or be the manager or be like the whatever function they are doing but all these functions matter right like if you are the person just code reviewing what like but you're really good at that but you're really good at that like that's value if you're like so I think there's that concept like glue work right like people talk about the thing like yes and there are some engineers that are like good at that that they're good at like making work move and like helping the code reviews and helping the QA and help you with like kind of like pairing and they help every other engineer be 5 % more efficient 10 % more efficient And they have that's like that's value, right?

6:39Totally. So I think that's the first thing, like results and kind of like and help teams understand that and engineers understand that. I think the second thing I kind of like talk about is understand the system or the process of like the systems and the process in plural that your team has, right? So I think any work goes from someone's idea somewhere to then a process that can take weeks or months or years in some situations until you get to deliver. And all of that, there's time, there's people, there's work, there's bottlenecks. And I think the more you can, as a leader, understand the whole picture and talk about the concept of the value stream map.

7:21where does it come from, where does it go to, and what are the other phases, and how long it takes, and what are the challenges there. The more you become an expert on that, the more you can, as a leader, know where the bottlenecks are and where the challenges are. Because at the end, if you don't know that, you could just be wasting your time. I did consulting for a long time, and one common problem that we would face was they would hire us to say, oh, we need to improve the quality of the team and here you come and do this particular thing. And then you realize, well, this thing takes maybe a day or two.

7:58And what you're doing before, it's taking like six months. So if you want to accelerate your delivery, of course, I can sharpen the ax here, but it's really not going to change much. Your money is better, your best is somewhere else. And as a leader, even within your team, you have those options, right? because I think like the investment decisions. Yeah, and even from time, like in focus, right? Like as a manager, do you focus on like the technical aspect of your team or the people aspect or the process aspect? Like just knowing where to put your time is important. And then I think, assuming you do that and you become that expert, you know, I think that the last thing is the third, not the last, I guess, like the third part to be like, be active in leading your team.

8:42I think like there is, I've seen this point, I think too many cases where managers become passive in how their teams work and they kind of say, well, the engineers think that's the best way to do it. I'm just going to let them do it. Even if I know it's not, and I'm just going to be... I think you need to kind of think about how to, of course, including people in a way that's inclusive and helps people achieve their potential, but how to direct the team to being effective. I think there is a, you look back into like the kind of lean production system that the family does a squall that sounds like you cannot be a change agent of a system that you're in, right?

9:19Like, and that's like the thing that we don't realize. If you're an engineer and you're like picking up like a ticket and writing code and like doing that, your focus is that, right? You're just like, you're doing that work. Like, you're not thinking about like, is this the most effective way I have this process? Because there's things that you're not seeing, like just like, because you just are not focused on that. But your focus is, I need to write the code to solve this problem that I'm given. As a manager, your focus should be like, I need to make it seem effective. And you have a better view of what's happening.

9:48So I think how driving that view in an active way is important. One way I kind of try to describe sometimes is saying like, every day is like, since we're in the US, I guess, like the American football kind of like analogy is just like, every day is a new play, right? You need to make sure that your team is making the best play they can. And that varies by day. One day could be like, we need to all be QAing this project that we need to deliver. Next day could be like, we need to review this doc or we need to collaborate or don't. Whatever that is. But there are variations that you need to use on a day-to-day basis.

10:26To follow along with your metaphor, there's a famous coaching philosophy in American football about win the day. Which is, look, don't worry about the game next week. Don't worry about the thing you have to do in the long run. Win today, whatever that task is today, and stack those wins on top of each other. And it's a process that I see be really successful in software engineering teams too, where you succeed in what you're doing and what's in front of you and you iterate on it. And that quick iteration cycle seems to be really crucial to make successful teams and to move organizations forward.

10:55And I love that you're thinking about the incentive piece of this too. So you brought this up. There's a lot of good nuggets to unpack, but I want to zero in on the incentives and how we set them up in organizations. because I agree with you that there are too often opportunities that get missed because individual incentive is to carry something through the whole way. And so maybe you miss opportunities to specialize people and actually make your whole organization more efficient. How would you zero in on that incentive challenge that you face in some teams and trying to fix that problem for your organization?

11:24Yeah, I think like, I mean, you're not going to escape the fact that, you know, you need to evaluate individuals, right? Of course. And individually, right, as well. Like, so that's like... But maybe not on like lines of code or something. Yeah, no, not... Yeah, exactly. I think like, that's kind of like, I think the way I would like, I've seen be more successful, I think it's just like, you need to focus on impact, right? I think like that's like the driving force of the business and like the team should be like, I think the more you can like connect your team to like the impact that the team has on the business, the more that you can align everyone on that.

12:00And interesting because I think that creates some, that model, I think it feels sometimes a bit weird because you can say, okay, well, maybe someone did a lot of things right, but at the end, the project wasn't delivered. And like that person kind of like now is going to be penalized by like the problem of others, right? Even though they're delivering a lot of value to that team. Yeah, even though they're doing some work. And then like you end up the question of like, what is value, right? And I think it creates some interesting aspect of your point. Maybe someone was very efficient writing a lot of code, but that wasn't the problem that needed to be solved.

12:37Yeah, if you're going fast in the wrong direction, it's not going to solve the problem. And also, I think the interesting thing is that when you create this, focus on something that's collective and value, you kind of like create incentives to everyone to like keep self-correcting the alignment, right? Because like it becomes like now your incentive as individuals to say like, well, this project is going nowhere. I need to speak to someone about it. And I need to like raise this to like my manager or like my like whoever there is to kind of that can take action because I know that if this doesn't work, like that kind of impacts me as well, right?

13:13So So it might be uncomfortable conversations, but they are useful conversations for the team and for everyone to just succeed. And I think my experience of that has always been like, it might be uncomfortable in some situations for an engineer to say, well, I'm now associated. My promise is associated to the collective success. That is a challenge. But then like, the thing is like, the more you work in a productive environment, the more you are going to grow as an individual, right? Like if I look back at my career, I think like the interesting parts were like solving really hard problems with a good group of people, right?

13:53Absolutely. And that's kind of like what I think you try to reproduce. You want to try to reproduce like in any team that's BFA. And I know you have experience working across multiple regions and cultures. how has that informed your approach as you evaluate how to effectively increase efficiency for engineering teams there's two points I think that are interesting talking about I think one is maybe so like just like where like I kind of like just like to clarify like my career like I started in Brazil and I was I'm from Brazil and then like I started consulting for this company ThoughtWorks in the UK and so I did that like for a few years I moved down to Australia and then like I sold it for a few years in Australia.

14:35But then also like started my own company there. And like, so I had like my own startup. And then I moved to the US where I joined, I guess like corporate America or like the technology industry. Welcome. But it's just the part, I think the US was like maybe the most like formal part of that. So I think like one is just like the common, I think like what gave me insight is one is just like the common ground. I think like everyone is trying to, all these countries and also I work in other countries for shorter periods. There are common elements of just what makes a team effective. And software is similar in different areas, in different projects, in different companies.

15:17And I think always when you're talking about just maybe putting a caveat on this whole conversation, I think when you're talking about teams and efficiency or any aspect of teams, there's always going to be the argument of like, well, every team is different. Sure, and we have to adjust. And that is true, right? And there's different teams, different companies and stuff, but there is a large, I see what my experience made me see, there's a large group of commonalities. I'm like, when you're delivering software, we kind of know how software should be delivered, right? Like you write high quality software, you collaborate on it, you test well, you kind of inject one in the system, you iterate faster, and that kind of, I would say a high percentage of softer projects.

16:00The general concepts we kind of agree. Yeah, exactly. So I think answering your question, I think that's one thing. I think the experience of seeing that as commonalities across different projects and problems and cultures. I think the other aspect that made me that I think maybe it's a bit more interesting is just like when people think about efficiency and process, there's usually the stereotype of like restrictive systems, right? So if you talk to someone and they say like, I hate Agile or Scrum or Kanban, whatever they like, whatever the thing that they just like really have a strong reaction, they're probably talking about a restrictive version of that process, right?

16:43And they're probably right, right? They probably work in this environment that like that didn't work and that was too much and they felt controlled and felt they couldn't do it. I think the idea when like talking about effectiveness is like you want to create a system that is well designed and can actually help people achieve their best potential. And I think the advantage of having that is that the more you make it open, the rules and the process around the team to the people, the easier it is to collaborate across different types of people. Because one challenge that I see now, going back to what I was saying about this not making teams effective, is that if your team doesn't have clear rules like how to work and like then like the people that have like low experience, low tenure, they come from underrepresented groups that just like don't have the connections to make things work, right?

17:32Like because what like a team that's not efficient usually becomes is like a team where like you need to know how things are done and you need to know tribal knowledge. Yeah, that's important and that becomes like kind of like negative progress for specific groups of people. And I think that clarifying how things work, it also helps you in multicultural environments, right? Because when you don't really have the social cues and the common social or cultural grounds, it's better to know and discuss how things are working. One example is giving feedback, right? In the United States, we're a pretty direct culture overall.

18:11But when it comes to giving negative feedback as a manager, you have to do this compliment sandwich where I'm like, hey, you know, Francisco, you're doing a really great job with your coding. Your PRs suck. They're too big. But overall, you're really doing a really great job. Whereas if I'm in Germany or the Netherlands, I can be much more direct about that potentially and say, hey, you have an issue with your PRs. Here's the problem. But depending on the makeup of the team and who your manager is, their style, and also the individual team members of my culture they come from, that could come off really badly if I'm maybe a US manager coming to the States and I try to say, oh, you know, you're doing a great job about X, Y, and Z.

18:50There's this tiny issue. It's not a big deal. Oh, by the way, you get a great job. Are they really going to necessarily focus on that? Or are they going to say, oh, I'm doing a great job. That's what they told me. So, I mean, that's just one example, but there's so much there within that kind of cultural applications across teams that I think is really important to understand. Yeah, definitely. And I think like, of course, you have to be mindful of like cultural context and kind of like who you're working with and who your teams are. And I think that's like really important. But I think to your point, the thing is just like the more those rules are like in the open and are like shared and known by the team, the less confusion there is and the less kind of like problems are out like in the thing.

19:27And when you talk about that, I think you should talk about like not only like making things explicit about how you communicate it and how like how often you communicate, how often you make like so that everyone understands and everyone like is on the same page, which kind of like at the end is like one of the roles of the manager, right? It's just like the leader, just like kind of make sure that that process is understood by everyone. I feel like technical documentation gets talked a lot about, but we don't necessarily talk about how to document the working relationships and workflows within your team.

19:57And as a leader, that's super crucial that you take that approach because otherwise it's hard for new team members to come in and they have to rely on this tribal knowledge, which they don't have. And you have to rely on your onboarding process. Whereas if you can say, okay, like here are working agreements, here's how we approach things, here's how we resolve conflict communicate yeah it can be a lot easier not only onboard folks but keep everyone on the same page moving forward together definitely i think especially in a remote environment i think that's just like it comes out like yeah yeah just like of course like it was useful i think in like when we were like at the office most of the time i think like now it's just like it's crucial right like now it's kind of like you join a company and you like literally don't know anyone and you don't meet anyone and you just like you always see is like you know, like a computer screen, like some calls where you see some faces.

20:42Like if you don't have like that, the tribal knowledge that already was like a challenge, I think it becomes more of a challenge even now. And if you don't have like ways to share the knowledge more like formally or more like in the open, like it becomes really a real challenge. Is Braze largely remote? Braze is largely remote. We have offices and we maintain the offices and we're going to, but like different departments kind of like pretty much manage their like remote policies. in engineering, we are pretty much like, every individual decides it's going to be remote or at the office. And I'm curious how you're applying some of these concepts you're talking about within the engineering organization at Braves.

21:21What have you done to increase efficiency? What has your focus been? I think a lot of it has been like, of course, like just like, and maybe just to clarify the Braves part, I think I manage like a part of Braves, not like the whole organization of course. So like there's different, the one thing that Braves has that I think we do quite well is that we have this kind of like, we try to maintain autonomy around teams as much as possible, of course, like with some limits, but like that means that every director has like their perspective on it and they can implement a perspective and that like helps.

21:53So teams work sometimes differently across the company. From my point of view, I think a lot of it is, one, this clarifying with managers that focus, right? And say, okay, the focus here is like, you need to make this team effective. And like, that's kind of like what we work to do. and that kind of is the thing that's going to help you, give you the freedom and the kind of like the context to innovate, which I think like one aspect of like, you're just like, throw it all down, we can talk more about that later, but like one interesting aspect of this whole like effectiveness versus kind of being active at creating the effective teams or not, like is that the intentions are great, right?

22:31Like it's just like you, if you're looking at like, or the managers and leaders that want to kind of like focus on individuals and focus on the people, they want, of course, they have the intention to make those individuals work as well as possible and give them the freedom they want. The challenge, I think I see and I see more often that I kind of think I thought I would was when that happens, sometimes, well, you usually end up creating ineffective teams, which is kind of like what makes people happy in the end. But then ineffective teams lead to the company losing trust on the team and on managers, which then leads to more oversight and less freedom, right?

23:08So you kind of like, by trying to create this space for individuals, you end up creating that constrained space because now everyone's asking about what you're doing and what's this person doing and how. And the reality is in any kind of organization, there's enough problems to solve. So if you can deliver effectiveness, you're going to create space where you can have more autonomy and then that means that the people in your team you can have more autonomy, you can drive that. It's interesting you bring this up because we've talked a lot about this at Linear B lately where we've said you don't have to sacrifice efficiency and productivity for happiness.

23:48These should go hand in hand when done right. An example is we released a free developer workflow automation tool to help with PR automation. And yeah, it's great for managers because it's helping PRs move faster and cycle times move faster and the team becomes more efficient. But almost more importantly, devs love it because they're like, oh, I can help automate some of the reviews I need to do on PRs, which is like a huge annoying sticking point for a lot of folks. And there's so many examples of this, right? Where, you know, it could be that in helping improve or automate workflows for your developers and, you know, make clear the working agreements and how you're going to apply them is going to help them be more effective.

24:26Because frankly, like most of us, I think as, as problem solvers and engineers, we're set, I like coding. There's a reason I'm doing this job. I like solving problems. I don't want to just be on a team that's, yeah, I have a lot of autonomy, but we're not doing anything. I want to solve something. I want to do something fun. And so if you can help that team workflow improve as a leader and say, okay, we're improving the workflows, we're improving how we collaborate, it's going to go a long way towards improving your team culture and happiness, which then, to your point, enables autonomy enables you to take these steps you want to do.

25:00It enables larger challenges as well. Just like I think everyone, I think one thing that we can probably say about every engineer is they want to solve harder and harder challenges. And the way to be given those harder challenges is to become good at solving challenges. That creates confidence and creates space for the team and the individuals to just tackle larger problems and it becomes a kind of like a positive kind of like journey, I guess. Yeah, we talk about it as this concept of compounding efficiencies. When you succeed at one thing, you can just keep compounding it on top of each other.