2018 ANDELA Engineering Management Report Table of Contents

ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE 4

ENGINEERING TEAM MANAGEMENT 6

RESOURCES FOR COLLABORATION 8

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION 9

TODAY’S ENGINEERING MANAGER 10

METHODOLOGY 12

2 The Inner Workings of the Modern Tech Manager

Engineering managers are well-versed in the challenges of modern business. Management demands more, better, sooner—and cheaper. Engineers insist on fulfillment, career development, flexible working conditions—and top compensation.

It’s no surprise that recruiting and retaining talent is the top concern for most engineering managers, according to the 2018 Andela Engineering Management Report. But that’s hardly their only concern. They reported that their companies could better support them through communication, resources, and flexibility.

Luckily, remote work may be the key to solving many of these concerns, Managers who work regularly with distributed employees cite remote work as key to improving productivity, communication and the overall success of their teams. Read on for more surprising insights on workforce trends and best practices in engineering management from today’s tech leaders. | ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE Remote Work Lives On

Overall, how much of your Although decentralized heavily on remote workers team work remotely? engineering workforces have overwhelmingly found that recently fallen out of favor in the arrangement benefited some companies, the practice both the culture and output remains widespread among of their teams. The nearly one engineering departments, in six managers who don’t use according to this study. Some distributed teams are far more employers embrace remote skeptical of the arrangement: arrangements to offer additional about half said having employees flexibility to existing workers. work remotely was negative for Others seek new pools of collaboration and relationship engineering talent in less building, and less than a quarter competitive locations. Some said the arrangement improved want both. success.

Whatever the reason, a mere But the most relevant insights 14% of the managers surveyed are most likely gleaned from reported that the entirety of their managers who oversee a hybrid team works in the same location. team, in which some engineers By contrast, 46% of respondents are co-located and others are reported having some of their working remotely. Comprising teams working remotely, while the largest segment in this year’s 40% said they rely on remote study, these professionals are workers most or all of the time. in the best position to compare the two arrangements, and this group found the overall Not surprisingly, managers in impact of a distributed impact companies that relied most

4 How does remote working How does remote working impact your management impact your management experience as it relates to experience as it relates to COLLABORATION? PRODUCTIVITY?

16% 35%

67%

80%

51% 84% 51% 37% 23% 90% 28% 14% 6% 2% 9% 14% 1% 10% Positive egative o Positive egative o mat mat mat mat mat mat

PATA PATA TT TT T TT TT T

5 | ENGINEERING TEAM MANAGEMENT The Business Case For Overcommunication

“GIVE ME THE Clear communication about as performance indicators, while RESOURCES I priorities and goals, along co-located ones focused more with communication through on quality. NEED TO EXECUTE collaboration tools helps ON PROJECTS managers sort through strained The frequency that managers resources to get things done. AND MEET MY meet with their direct reports COMMITMENTS.” starkly reflects this difference. Not surprisingly, communication Surprisingly, those with the is most critical for managers largest share of remote workers with the largest or most widely are the most likely to have distributed teams. These daily or weekly meetings with leaders have developed a their full teams than those with more structured approach to more centralized groups. They management than those who also have more frequent one- can see their whole group at a on-one meetings and formal glance. They have also gotten performance reviews with their their teams on board to measure engineers. productivity and business impact

6 Which best describes how Which best describes how often you have one-on-one often you have performance meetings with your direct reviews with your direct reports? reports?

75%

65% 63%

53% 47%

32% 35% 30% 28%

22% 16% 17% 14% 12% 13% 6% 4%

Weekly Monthly Quarterly Weekly Monthly Quarterly

PATA PATA TT TT T TT TT T

7 | RESOURCES FOR COLLABORATION Tools of the Trade

Andela’s survey asked several Which of the following is the questions exploring the most important tool used by technological tools engineering your team to keep remote teams used for collaboration. employees in the loop of new Surprisingly, email remains the policies, rationale behind top choice of pretty much every decisions, etc.? group. However, enthusiasm for the medium was lowest among Customer elationsi younger managers, smaller anagement otware

oument torage companies and those with a lot Proet anagement ter of remote workers. otware

The industry may see a decrease in reliance on email as a collaboration tool as distributed 42% teams continue to grow, while 13% business chat services, such as Slack, are on the rise as the next in line. 22% oument Collaboration mail

nternal Cat

8 | LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION The Case for Location

Companies with largely remote important characteristic. The managers of workforces are more likely to prioritize predominantly remote teams put a higher specific skills and experience when hiring, premium on some of the more disciplined and more likely to offer workers defined aspects of programming, such as testing career path options and development and code review. Leaders of onsite teams opportunities. Collectively, these put human values such as culture fit and approaches appear to pay off. Managers ambition higher up. of largely remote workforces are half as worried about employee turnover than This difference can also be seen sharply those of onsite-only companies. in the answers leaders gave when asked how they evaluate the importance of When asked what is important in a new experience with a particular language recruit, nine out of 10 respondents or technology stack when hiring. More chose problem-solving and collaboration than 55% of leaders of mainly remote skills when asked to select multiple teams said specific experience was very factors. Problem solving stayed at the important compared to only 16% of those top of the list when the managers with local teams. were asked to pick the single most

Fully Distributed Partially Distributed Fully On-site

Problem-solving 28% Problem-solving 30% Problem-solving 37%

Programming Testing 11% 14% Collaboration skills 13% language proficiency

Collaboration skills 10% Collaboration skills 11% Culture-fit 13%

Code review Code review 8% 9% Ambitious 6% capability capability

Programming Programming 8% Proactive 7% 4% language proficiency language proficiency | TODAY’S ENGINEERING MANAGER A Cry for Support

ONLY 55% OF Andela’s survey tried to teams, 56% strongly agreed that THE MANAGERS determine if respondents felt they have the resources they supported by their companies, need to succeed as a manager at STRONGLY and the results painted a their company, vs. 44% of those BELIEVE THAT mixed picture. Only 55% of the that have no remote workers. THEIR COMPANY managers strongly believe that their company understands the UNDERSTANDS THE This striking result, combined value of their team. And less than VALUE OF THEIR with much of the rest of the half (44%) were sure that the study, begins to describe a TEAM. engineering team was seen as a path that many engineering strategic partner of the C-suite. managers have taken: distributed One dramatic difference was workforces. With this tool, that both leaders of larger teams they can search more widely and leaders of teams that mostly for talent and do more to work remotely felt significantly keep the engineers fulfilled. more valued. Asked whether To make this work, these the CEO of their company managers have learned that understands the value of their crisp communication, structured team, 71% of those who lead management and attention to teams of more than 20 members career development are keys to strongly agreed compared to satisfaction. only 42% of those leading teams of 10 or fewer engineers. As for those who lead mostly remote

10 How could your company support your development as a manager better?

“Better communication and more technological based resources. We have a diverse team and that needs to continue, but communication is key.”

“Hire the right fit, and provide good packages to talents so that we can retain them.”

“My current company does not understand employee development as a process. We need to start from the ground up in making a system that supports employee development at all levels.”

“Provide better resources to hire more people and allow permanent ability to hire remote workers.”

“Provide resources to filter out recruitment and offer hiring apps to help with filtering and finding the right applicants.”

11 | METHODOLOGY

About the Andela Engineering Leadership Report

SOME EMPLOYERS The 2019 Andela Engineering one in four (23%) of respondents EMBRACE REMOTE Leadership Report is an in- hold the title of vice president depth look at the views and or higher, while 27% are director ARRANGEMENTS TO behaviors of the people who level and 50% are managers or OFFER ADDITIONAL manage teams of IT engineers team leaders. FLEXIBILITY TO in the United States. It is based on an extensive survey of 503 EXISTING WORKERS. By age, 58% of respondents managers at U.S. companies, were millennials (born in 2000 OTHERS SEEK nonprofit organizations, and or later), with 42 percent older. government agencies, ranging NEW POOLS OF By company size, 49% worked in size from 100 to more than ENGINEERING at companies between 100 and 10,000 employees. It was TALENT IN LESS 999 employees and 51% worked conducted online between at companies larger than that. COMPETITIVE October 15 and October 26, LOCATIONS. 2018, by Market Cube. Nearly

12 About Andela

Andela has helped more than 150 companies embrace distributed work by scaling their engineering teams with the top developers from the African continent.

Find out how Andela can help you hire smarter, faster – different. andela.com