#94 - Engineering Manager Essentials - Patrick Kua Tech Lead Journal

“An engineering manager should make sure that the team has a good balance of delivering things that the business needs with enough capacity to do it sustainably over time."

Patrick Kua is a seasoned technology leader with a passion to accelerate the growth and success of tech organisations and technical leaders. In this episode, we discussed Pat’s latest course, Engineering Manager Essentials, which covers all the building blocks required to be an effective Engineering Manager (EM). We first discussed what an EM role is, how it differs from a tech lead role, and the common manager vs IC career track. Pat shared his view on why being an EM is not a promotion and what are some of the success criteria to be a good EM. Towards the end, Pat shared some anti-patterns that EM should avoid to become successful.

Listen out for:


Pat’s Latest - [00:07:30]
Engineering Manager Essentials - [00:09:25]
The Role of Engineering Manager - [00:11:21]
Difference With Tech Lead - [00:14:19]
Manager and IC Paths - [00:16:28]
EM Is Not a Promotion - [00:21:02]
EM Success Criteria - [00:28:08]
Multiplier Instead of Maker - [00:30:48]
Course Structure - [00:33:21]
Interviewing EM - [00:37:20]
Antipattern 1: Continuing as a Maker - [00:39:58]
Antipattern 2: Assuming Everyone Knows What You Do - [00:43:01]
Antipattern 3: Optimizing Parts Instead of The Whole - [00:48:34]
3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:51:30]

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Patrick Kua’s Bio
Patrick Kua is a seasoned technology leader with 20+ years of experience having done a wide variety of roles including being a developer, tech lead, consultant, CTO and more. His current mission is accelerating the growth of technical leaders through coaching, mentoring and training.

Follow Patrick:


Website – https://patkua.com/
Twitter – @patkua
LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/patkua/
EM Essentials Course – https://www.patkua.com/em-essentials/
Tech Lead Academy – https://techlead.academy/
Level Up Newsletter – https://levelup.patkua.com/



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For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/94.