Francisco Trindade
I'm Francisco, an engineering leader with experience in many places and situations. Currently, I'm a Vice President of Engineering at Braze in New York, and I'm passionate about helping engineers collaborate more effectively.
I've been fortunate enough to work as a technology consultant for ThoughtWorks, helping teams all over the world, from startups in the UK to major enterprises in Australia. I've also founded companies and led engineering organizations along the way, gaining valuable insights into managing teams across diverse settings.
You can find more of my writing at https://franciscomt.medium.com/
Session
As I have worked as a manager and managed engineering managers (EM) in recent years, I have continued to see an anti-pattern that makes the role much harder: the excessive focus on managing individuals. And that is not surprising. A common industry perspective is that the EM's role is to support engineers. Unblock them, shield them from meetings, let them make technical decisions. That framing is helpful, but it's also why so many EMs feel accountable for outcomes they can't quite control.
The reality is that engineering leadership is not only about people management. It is about delivering results. And results come from actively building effective systems for your team. As an engineering manager, you’re the micro-CTO of your team: your role is to define those systems. You own how work gets defined, how your process operates, and how your people collaborate. You're responsible for creating an environment where engineers can be effective, not just hoping they figure it out.
This talk will focus on real stories. The story of an EM who had great feedback from his reports but led a team that was slowly failing, and how it impacted the engineers they were trying to support. The story of another EM who worked extremely hard but managed a team that was constantly overwhelmed and burned out. And my story of struggling to stabilize a team in a highly competitive startup environment. Most importantly, it will demonstrate how all these situations improved when managers took control of their team’s systems.
To support these examples, I'll introduce the three interconnected areas every engineering manager must understand: Product (what you're building), Engineering (how you're building it), and People (who's building it). When these areas are misaligned, like when product demands speed while engineering processes demand more quality, everything feels hard. When they work together, your team becomes remarkably effective. By understanding this perspective, teams can be transformed by fixing misalignments rather than working harder.