Lars Feske

Putting a high-performance team together out of individuals is tough. The key is getting to know each colleague and their skills, understanding them, helping them grow, shaping them into their direction of choice and putting them all together like puzzle pieces.

While having been a front end web developer my thoughts grew stronger to not only grow my coding skills, but also my managing skills. I got the opportunity a while ago. Getting the choice of becoming an individual contributor or an engineering manager was tough. Back in the days both paths were one, but the future separated them (in multiple companies). I took the chance and went down the manager's path. It was the right decision and I learned so much over the past years.

But how did I get to this point of being an Engineering Manager?

Born and raised in the heart of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, I grew up in a loving family with an older brother that I only had to fight with when our parents put new chocolate into the living room cupboard. I went to high school not far from my hometown and made my first steps living on my own when I started my study at the university.

I have been strongly into computers since I was a child. Very early I developed a passion for "Communication Design and Media", but my hand drawings have never been first class. I know it – two university applications told me a long time ago. And so my way into web development was paved by studying "Multimedia Engineering" where I found my existence in a small portion of modules. Strictly speaking a one-term module called "Web Programming of Multimedia Applications”. From that day on I made my choice and out of 6 months learning web programming at the university became over 10 years of self-education in the specific field of front end. Sorry, not only by myself. I met great people in the past that supported me in gaining knowledge and getting further.

Supporting others was my personal missing puzzle piece that has been getting shaped every day since quite a while and especially as engineering manager.

Homeday GmbH

Engineering Manager (10/2020 - 12/2022)

People Management:
Creating a space for engineers to grow. Working with engineers individually to facilitate career development, coaching and regular feedback. Analysing individual skills, planning progresses and capacities within my squad's scope. As a hiring manager I am responsible for staffing of the personnel in my team.

Communication and Alignment:
Providing sufficient context to the engineers to understand how their daily activities relate to the company mission and strategy. Striving for a healthy squad environment, identifying potential challenges and proactively engaging in open and honest discussions to mitigate them. Facilitating potential conflict resolution scenarios within the squads or between squads and stakeholders.

Planning:
I am responsible for the onboarding plan and execution as well as ensuring it is followed to completion by new employees.

Processes:
Implementing best practices and processes (e.g. QA) as well as ensuring company policies are properly followed by al engineers of my squat. Taking the right level of involvement and ensuring to not only have proper context from and for my squad but also to contribute to cross-squad initiatives within our peer group *.

*Shared responsibilities within the peer group:
Design, Engineering and Product Roadmap - developing and maintaining according to the company's strategy. I am an active member of the "Engineering promotion council", ensuring consistency across departments when it comes to granting promotions. Developing, introducing and promoting standard processes.

Senior Frontend Engineer (06/2020 - 09/2020)

Specified epics and acted as a technical partner for the product manager. Owned tasks to have high QA standards practices.

Drove ideas and convinced others to join the efforts, when needed, with solid communication skills. Never afraid to present topics in front of larger and diverse (also non-technical) groups.

Gained context and product knowledge to challenge and communicate epics and priorities.

Also thought further than my squad and strove to improve the technology stack as a whole. Helped and contributed with topics that were beneficial for the Engineering team and not only for one squad.

Helped to define implementation steps and identified edge cases.
Contributed to the roadmap of the squad with technical topics. Created positive impact by leading the OKRs implementation.

Implemented and tested new functionalities. Worked on Technical Debt topics.

Mentored less experienced engineers. Helped developers and stakeholders from other squads when necessary.

Proactively proposed ideas on how to improve the customer experience and contributed to the squad's roadmap with it.

Hochschule Wismar

Bachelor of Engineering (B. Eng.), Multimediatechnik