Forum Familia! Things are still moving along like a bullet train here at Monzo.
February monthly update landed since our last Q&A, so make sure you check it out to get the inside scoop.
Itās almost time to get into this weekās Staff Q&A!
Is managing a collection of young (for the most part) engineers in an ambitious business easier or harder than for a more old school engineering company?
Is a burgeoning fintech industry making it harder to find and keep engineers (as demand is higher) or easier in a way (as it has attracted more people into the industry)?
Itās not really an individual feature, but itās taken us longer than I originally expected to build deeper integrations with other services. Weāve been talking about connecting to things like ISAs, savings accounts and investment providers since the beginning but itās only been in the last 6 months that weāve been able to really make progress on this. Iām very excited about the integrations weāre working on at the moment!
A couple of projects spring to mindā¦ The team did an amazing job getting our Flux integration launched in a really short space of time. Watching the progress on business banking is also really exciting at the moment
There are things that make managing engineers (of any level of experience!) harder at Monzo than elsewhere. The company is moving really fast and growing at an incredible rate. I often describe this as managing a group of engineers who are constantly experiencing the most challenging week of their careers.
Iām more convinced that in order to succeed in that environment, you need to be able to adopt a growth mindset. The thing that makes it easier to manager engineers at Monzo is that people tend to adopt this mindset by default. Iām managing engineers whoāve just left school or uni and others who have worked at tech giants like Amazon or Microsoft. In both cases, if theyāre ready to learn new things and can reflect on their āfailuresā as opportunities to grow, my job is a whole lot easier
I first managed a team of engineers in my last job. I definitely hadnāt planned to get into managing people though! I was working in a really great team, but one day my manager announced that he was leaving. He pulled me aside and said āYouāve probably figured this out, but Iād like you to lead the team nowā. I definitely hadnāt figured that out , but I thought it would be a good opportunity so I gave it a go.
I started managing the 4 people who had previously been my peers (which has its own challenges ) and spent a lot of time figuring out how to be a good manager for them. I made a bunch of mistakes and got some really good feedback from my team, but after a while I realised that I really enjoyed the people management side of things.
When I left to join Monzo, I decided that I wanted to go back to being an engineer for a while as I was missing the challenge of working on new technical problems. I did that for a while, but after a year in the job was starting to miss the people management side of the role. I was lucky enough that Monzo was looking for people to become managers, so I started managing a few people and decided to becoming a full-time Engineering Manager last Summer.
Iām a strong believer in the engineer/manager pendulum. I expect to make a few more swings back and forth between manager and engineer in my career. It means I get the chance to manage people (which I really enjoy), but also keep my tech skills fresh.
I would love to use a budgeting tool that letās me understand the impact of my borrowing. I have a habit of sticking big purchases on a credit card and then forgetting to factor in the repayments into my budget. This usually means I have to dip into savings every now and again to fix the gap. I would love it if Monzo could help me see the impact of my decisions today on how much money Iāll have in the future. Some thing like āIf you stick this on credit today, youāll blow your budget in a couple of monthsā timeā. I really like the idea that Monzo isnāt here to control my spending, but to give me information that puts me in control of it.
This isnāt one development methodology that we use across the board, but most teams are using some form of agile development that probably looks most similar to a Kaban approach.
There are a few practices that I see teams doing at Monzo that work well for us but arenāt features of one particularly methodology:
Setting ambitious weekly goals and focusing on achieving those, rather than a defined list of tasks that you commit to
Giving engineers problems to solve, rather than solutions to implement. You might start the week with a problem like āPeople want to be able to save towards a specific goalā and spend your time figuring out what the solution should look like before diving into the code
Whenever we start a big piece of work we tend to have a ākick-offā meeting with mobile engineers, backend engineers, design, data and product. These sessions happen whenever theyāre necessary (thereās no fixed schedule) but theyāre great for getting everyone aligned and flushing out any unknowns that we should address upfront.
I really love this question Iām going to start asking it to engineers in 1:1s
My answer would be: āwe donāt have all the answersā. When you join Monzo it can be tempting to think ātheyāre doing great, they must be doing everything rightā. That can lead you to accept processes and ways of working rather than challenging them. I was very reluctant to make suggestions when I first joined because everybody seemed so smart. But I soon realised that because there is so much to do, most of the decisions we made in the past were taken quickly and thereās almost certainly a better way to do things.
This might not be Monzo specific, but for me itās delivering difficult performance feedback. We are really trying to build the best team possible and that means both supporting people in doing the best work of their career, but also being honest with them when things arenāt going well. Iām getting a lot more confident with this, but itās one of the hardest parts of being a manager. Iāve learnt a lot from Radical Candor about how delivering tough feedback in the right way is often the most helpful thing you can do for someoneās development.
Iām currently managing engineers working across a few different teams (Lending, Savings and Growth).
In Lending weāre working on the underlying systems that help us make credit decisions (how much should we lend and to who?) as well as building features in the app that we think will make borrowing better for everyone.
In Savings weāre iterating on Savings Pots in response to your feedback, as well as working on new partnerships to help make your money work even harder.
The engineers in the Growth team are working on our referral mechanisms and looking at how we can help people discover more of the useful features in Monzo sooner.
Weāre looking for empathetic managers with a technical background to support and coach our engineers and help drive technical initiatives that improve our engineering practices.
I personally value managers with a high degree of empathy, a strong self-awareness and an ability to challenge the people they manage without pushing them too far and too fast.
I try to build relationships with the people I manage where they feel comfortable giving me feedback directly. We also have ways for them to provide feedback anonymously when they donāt feel comfortable with that. More concretely I also try to admit when Iām wrong or somethingās not working. Definitely something Iām working on though!
I definitely think the latter. A lot of the engineers we interview are coming from a totally different sectors and are interested in Fintech. The mission and culture in each of the big Fintech companies in London is also quite different, which means thereās a lot of different routes in for engineers who are interested.
and worked on one of the LHC experiments at CERN
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, but I thought it would be a good opportunity so I gave it a go.
) and spent a lot of time figuring out how to be a good manager for them. I made a bunch of mistakes and got some really good feedback from my team, but after a while I realised that I really enjoyed the people management side of things.
Iām going to start asking it to engineers in 1:1s 
(I really like dogs)