The computer and information technology sector is projected to grow faster than any other occupation over the next ten years.

As more and more people enter the field, the need for management grows, too. The software engineering field is notoriously fickle about hiring “outside managers,” and for good reason; research shows that the most effective managers not only understand the work of their teams, but can actually do the work, too.

In 2002, Google decided to eliminate managers. It went terribly (as you might guess) and managers were reinstated. Still, Google remained so skeptical of management that, in 2008, they assigned a team of researchers to go figure out whether management was useful or not.

The effort was code-named Project Oxygen. The result of that research is some of the highest fidelity insight into what makes great managers great that we have ever had.

During uncertain, difficult, extraordinary times, your job as an engineering manager fundamentally changes.

When the world is predictable and the team is fully engaged, you can focus on output, set and model a high bar, give frequent feedback, and push the team to be the best that it can be. But when the world is upside down and everyone is living a reality they didn’t sign up for, the best thing you can do is be totally supportive.

“Ugh, what are we even going to talk about?”

How many times have you looked at your calendar, realized that you have a one-on-one meeting with someone on your team, and fallen into a spiral of anxiety about how you will fill the time? Maybe you end up talking about their current project’s status, or you grab a couple of questions from that “101 questions to ask in a one-on-one” list and ask those, or, almost the worst of all, you just chat about life and industry news for 45 minutes.

We had suffered a massive outage. It was so big that it made headlines across our industry, caused tangible customer churn, and sent ripples of distrust through the businesses we served. While nobody would wish for this to happen, it is something that will happen to practically any technology business eventually, and what is important is how you respond.

I thought that my company responded perfectly. They openly apologized, took responsibility, and enacted changes through the product engineering organization to shore up the stability and reliability of our systems. It was the right thing to do.