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

**Francisco Trindade** (0:00)
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, the only thing you cannot end 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 kind of 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?

**Conor Bronsdon** (0:33)
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Welcome back to Lead Dev New York with Dev Interrupted, where we are about to have an incredible interview with Francisco Trindade. Welcome.

**Francisco Trindade** (2:01)
Thanks, Conor. Thanks for having me.

**Conor Bronsdon** (2:03)
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.

**Francisco Trindade** (2:30)
It's an interesting topic, I think mostly because I think there's been like a shift in the industry in the past like 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 in tech, I think we lived this kind of like, you know, maybe 10 or 20 years of just like 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 like we have focused a lot of individuals in teams, like in how to kind of create good environments for engineers to grow and how like to kind of like let individuals flourish in teams. And 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 like 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 like micromanagement, right? I think if you want to be a kind of, you're going to be hired as a manager anyway, like the only thing you cannot end in the interviews that you're going to be like a micromanager, right? That's like, that doesn't get you a 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 bend a bit too much to the kind of like 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? 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, I read 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.