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Interviewing Your Future Boss?
crimethinker asks: "I am an embedded systems engineer for a small division of a large company. Up to now, we have managed to get by with little more than a 'team lead' position, but as our division grows, they are looking to hire a full-on engineering manager. I was one of the candidates, with my current boss's favorable recommendation, but I withdrew my resume when they told me the job was all paper and schedules; I'd never touch code or hardware again. Now the VP has a 'short list' of candidates, and has invited me to be one of the interviewers. Yes, you read that correctly: I will be interviewing the person who will become my boss. So, I put the question to you, Slashdot: what questions should I ask my prospective boss?"
Look around. The company let the last secretary for your engineering group retire 5 years ago. You have been doing all the ordering and tracking. A manager of a development group attends all the planning meetings but he or she must also be the clerk and secretary for the group. You do not need to know how the company has changed the PO approval process. Leave that up to the manager.
but it sounds like the perfect opportunity to find a boss who works for you, not the other way around.
What I mean is, the Engineering Manager, say, is there to make sure the department is doing what the company needs.. but equally, there to make sure the company is providing the engineers with the resources and environment needed to do their jobs. Disciplinary action aside, a good manager in a position like that should almost NEVER have to exert authority over his staff, becuase the staff already do their job properly.. he's just there to deal with situations where a tiebreaker is needed, and to keep an extra focus on where the company really wants to go. Most of his work should be the other way around... going up the chain of command to get the staff what they need, and properly communicate how things are going to the rest of management.
This is not a technical interview if it is a VP job - make sure they know they business.
I would definately want to know what is the boss's stile of management.
...
... a hands-on type of coach who wants to know day-to-day what you are working on and when are you going to have it completed.
... the hands-off type who enables you to guide your projects and assign completion dates, etc. while always being available for manegement-specific questions.
... a good team-lead?
... going to take the team out for lunch once or twice a year to bond?
Is he/she
A good manager IMHO lets their employees guide their own careers while providing targeted guidance.
When I become an Evil Overlord: My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through.
Right, like a woman is ever going to be the boss in a embedded systems team.
Huh? The best manager I've ever had was Sandy Hoag, when she was the VP of Engineering back at MontaVista (MontaVista being, as you may recall, an embedded software company).
Consequently, I can say with certainty that the chauvinistic horseshit in your post is empirically wrong.
It's the early afternoon just after lunch that gets me. Food in my stomach,
Cut back on the carbs there, big guy.
That, or have a decent breakfast.
Or, more likely, both.
One was great, one was a disaster. Make sure you go out to lunch or something of the sort. See what kind of a guy or girl the candidate is and if you'd want to have lunch with that person. By that, you'll discover how you get along and how you can work together separating the BS from the actual productive work.
The bad experience, I didn't approve. However, he was hired on due to politics and recommendations from the CTO at the time. The personality conflicts became brutal and almost ended up in a bloody mess - literally.
That said, I cannot state questions for you to ask. But I will let you know, you canNOT ask personal questions regarding their family, etc.
1. Inspire growth.
2. Firewall politics.
3. Negotiate resources.
4. Advertise results.
I skipped breakfast every day since high school. I definitely had sleepiness (or "postprandial torpor" as I like to call it) after lunch. Finally about a year ago I started eating a small breakfast---just half a small sandwich. No more torpor, and no weight gain from the extra food; I can only assume I eat a little bit less the rest of the day.
Premature optimization is the root of all evil
1. How do you resolve conflicts?
2. What is your management style?
3. Methodology that you use to do peer reviews?
4. Are you a boss or leader? Explain and show with examples! Compare answer given here to #2!
5. What was the greatest success you had as part of a team. What didn't work and what did.
6. What was your greatest failure. What worked and what didn't.
It does not matter if you are interviewing a prospective colleague, subordinate, or superior; the objective is the same. Will this person add, or subtract, from this company. The best candidate adds the most.
The best interviews, as far as I am concerned, do not follow a strict Q&A format, but flow, and develop, as a natural conversation would. In essence, the interview should feel natural, not forced.
Should you proceed with you own application? This is tricky and depends so much on your organisation and their ethos. How hurt would you feel if your organisation chooses an outsider instead of you? If you would feel terribly hurt then perhaps not applying is the best option. If, however, you trust your employer to find a good candidate for the position then perhaps you should still apply. You may not get the job but, because you trust your employer to get a good person, you should not feel too disappointed if another candidate is hired since, by definition, you trust your employer to do the right thing.
Note that by better I only mean better in the current set of circumstances. You may not be the best person for the job right now. You may be too focussed on the technical details; you may lack an interest in the big picture; you may prefer to hone your technical skills before moving into a management speciality. However, none of this precludes your from being the ideal candidate several months (or years) down the road. As we develop, our interests and focus change. You may be technically focussed now but may be looking for a big picture position later on.
In my case, I rose to the grand title of Technical Manager because, in part, I wanted to have more influence in the products' direction and be able to present my ideas at a higher level in the company. I have to admit that the team management aspects were not top-most in my mind. My team knew what it had to do, and how to do it. It did not need me to direct them on a day-to-day basis. It did, however, need an advocate for ideas on how to improve our products (we were an RTOS & development tools company) and how to reduce the complaints from the field.
The question you should ask youself is; why do you want to be the engineering manager? There is nothing wrong in saying that you want more money, no matter what others might say. There is nothing wrong in saying that the job title means a lot to you. There is nothing wrong in saying that you want to make sure senior management doesn't screw things up when they add an engineering manager. But, there is a lot wrong with not being honest in why you want the position; both with yourself, and others. Know thyself