In the recent episode of ‘groCTO: Originals’ (formerly: ‘Beyond the Code: Originals’), host Kovid Batra welcomes Claus Höfele, Head of Engineering at On and the author of the newsletter ‘Drawn to Leadership’. He has a rich technical background at the Doctari Group, eBay Classifieds, Sony Ericsson, and more. Their conversation revolves around ‘Engineering Leadership 101: Key skills and transition tips’.
The episode begins with Claus sharing the core function of his company ‘On’ and the inspiration behind his newsletter. Following that, he explores his definition of ‘Leadership’ and describes his journey from a software engineer to a leader. He also offers insights into his role as a Director of Engineering, managing multiple teams, context switching, and escalations, particularly in lean structures or during hiring phases.
Lastly, Claus delves into defining success for engineering teams and discusses his significant success as an Engineering Director and the contributing factors.
Kovid Batra: Hi, everyone. This is Kovid, back with another episode of Beyond the Code by Typo. Today with us, we have an interesting guest. He’s the author of ‘Drawn to Leadership’, who summarizes leadership concepts through sketches. He’s currently working as an Engineering Director at On. He has 15 years of engineering and leadership experience. Welcome to the show, Claus. Happy to have you here.
Claus Höfele: Thank you for inviting me, Kovid. Great to be here.
Kovid Batra: The company name is really interesting, “On”. Could you tell our audience what does it do?
Claus Höfele: Yeah. Yeah. So, the company produces, well, running shoes, sports apparel, etc. So, I think maybe you’re switched on or it’s switching on the exercises and movements. Um, so it’s a company, coming out of Switzerland, but I’m based in Berlin where they have a tech hub, and, yeah, where I’m supporting different cross-functional teams, software teams, working to make logistics and yeah, producing the right types of, of shoes.
Kovid Batra: That’s so cool. Nice. And tell us something about your newsletter, the blog that you write, the sketches that you make. I checked them out and those are really interesting. For our audience, we’ll share the link in the comments when we post this out, but tell us about from where did that inspiration come in and what was your thought while bringing this to the audience.
Claus Höfele: Yeah. So, when I was a software engineer, I often went to conferences and shared my know-how about software development. And then, I got into leadership and I’ve been doing this for a while. And then recently, I felt like, hey, I could maybe do a podcast or maybe share my knowledge in a, in a newsletter. And I thought sketchnotes is an interesting twist to it because you can summarize different concepts in a very good way. It’s maybe sometimes a kind of a visual aid, like to memorize the concepts. Sometimes it’s, you know, bringing the gist out of these concepts on point and yeah, I’ve started sharing this in a newsletter. I’m pretty active on LinkedIn about, you know, sharing my trials and tribulations of leadership. I felt I always received really good feedback learning from others, so I wanted to share something as well. And the sketchnotes, they are hand-drawn on an iPad. And I think, you know, it’s in a way also fighting my perfectionism, because hand-drawn is always a little bit imperfect or imprecise. And I think this balances out, you know, the world we live in. It’s often very digital and very, you know, exact and blue. And this is a bit more a playful way to approach leadership, which is important to me. I think we don’t have to take leadership too seriously. It is a big topic, but having playful ways to learn more about leadership, I think that’s important to me.
Kovid Batra: No, that’s actually cool. And I’m sure these visuals leave a very good impact on your memory. So, remembering those is much easier when you, like, listen to it on a podcast or maybe read it. For me personally, I would say the visual things are more impactful in terms of learning and remembering as compared to maybe listening or reading. Of course, reading brings a very different angle where you can have your own imagination; that can be good for a lot of people, but I really appreciate this way of learning. But, I’m more interested in from where this inspiration of sketching came into the picture. Like, is it a childhood hobby that you had or you recently developed it somehow?
Claus Höfele: Yeah, I think I’ve recently developed or found that kind of a skill or, for me, it’s a way to, to maybe live out my creativity. I like to write and also sketching is a bit, you know, maybe something I can’t do super-great, but you know, it’s always, you know, the process that I enjoy doing. And, yeah, it’s, it’s basically an outlet for my creativity.
Kovid Batra: Cool. Nice.
Claus Höfele: Fortunately, with the iPad technologies and good drawing applications, it’s also become much easier to do this sort of thing. So, on paper, it’s even, even harder, but with the assistance of an iPad and good drawing programs, it’s quite doable to learn this.
Kovid Batra: Yeah, I mean, using an iPad is absolutely cool because in the age of AI, when we are writing our articles with the help of ChatGPT, which definitely increases our quality of writing, reduces the time to write it. Similarly, I think that technology works for you, man. I really appreciate using such productive tools, for sure.
Cool. All right. So this was a great thing that we got to know about you. Apart from this, do you love travelling? Have you travelled to different countries?
Claus Höfele: So I, I used to live in different countries. I used to live three years in Japan and five years in Australia. So, I have bit travelled the long way around to Berlin. So, I’m originally from the south of Germany, but then spent nearly a decade abroad and then came back to Germany and since then, I’ve been living in Berlin. It was an interesting experience. So, my wife is from the UK, so we were also looking for English-speaking countries and I took some opportunities. So, Japan was an opportunity that I had working for the right company and being at the right place at the right time. So we spent a bit of our time working and living abroad.
To be honest, now that I’m back in Germany, it kind of calmed down a little bit. I mean, COVID also helped, but now I’m feeling like, hey, Berlin is great. There are lots of things to see and do here, so I’m not travelling that much any longer.
Kovid Batra: Cool. Japan, Australia, back to Germany. I’m not sure how Australia and Germany would be a different experience for you, it sure is, but Japan would be a drastic culture change, right?
Claus Höfele: Yeah. Yeah, definitely.
Kovid Batra: And I have heard a lot about Japan. So, any specific learnings from your experience at Japan? Where were you working? What were you doing there?
Claus Höfele: Yeah. I was working for a joint venture of a Japanese and Swedish mobile phone manufacturer. And, so they were kind of, they had people from a lot of cultures, right? And yeah, I think Japan was a very interesting experience. So, I mentioned that my wife is from the UK, so Australia was a little bit more planned and thinking, hey this could work out also with, with the language, but coming to Japan, it was yeah, I want to say super-exotic, very different experience. I was super-curious, and learning and getting to know the culture. So they have a, have a very strong work ethic, but fortunately, also for maybe foreigners, they take it a bit easier on you. So I really had a great time getting to know the country. In the end, I didn’t speak the language too well. I started learning, but of course, it takes some time. So, in the end, it was something we did, but then moved on to Australia.
Kovid Batra: I think learning different languages impacts your processing, the brain processing in a very different way. Did you experience something, like when you were learning this language, how is it different, and how it impacted you when you were trying to speak in that language, think in that language?
Claus Höfele: Yeah. I felt very inspired by also the the, the Japanese script. I mean, they use like, different alphabets, at least two alphabets and also Chinese symbols, right. And Chinese symbols, maybe this, you know, ties in with the sketchnotes, you know, it’s very, it doesn’t exactly say.. It has a kind of an implicit meaning, right? That, and I, had a really interesting book, like also trying to, you know, see the meaning of the Chinese symbol inside this symbol, you know? Maybe it kind of mimics a bit. “Tree” would kind of mimic sort of the shape of a tree. So, it’s a much more intuitive approach to, to writing, to reading and writing, that felt very strange to me, but also super-interesting.
Kovid Batra: Cool. Cool. Coming back to your blog, newsletter, sketching, it’s all about leadership, right? You’re guiding people who are aspiring leaders for tomorrow to lead better teams, right? So let’s start talking about something there, like how do you define leadership? What leadership is for you?
Claus Höfele: So, I think first of all, leadership can happen on any level. Like, it’s not necessarily a position. That said, if you are a manager, it’s hard to imagine being a manager without having leadership skills, right? So maybe for managers, it’s more important, but I think it’s totally true that, you know, anybody can be a leader by showing, you know, by being proactive and kind of guiding other people to put outcomes. And, the way I define myself as a leader is that I have a background as a software engineer, but I’ve been, you know, hands-off from programming for quite a while. So, I don’t feel I want to have or need to have the solutions any longer. I see my job as helping other people to get to the right solutions. So, I’m spending a lot of time also planning workshops or trying out different techniques to involve as many people as possible, um, to have everyone have, have a say, but still, you know, make good outcomes and good progress on the problems that we’re working on. For example, running, like team kickoff workshops, or maybe also online sessions to tackle a problem. And, what’s working really well, for example, is Miro or doing this in-person. And I think these workshops, what they all have in common is that it’s a structured way to kind of channel creativity into really good outcomes.
Kovid Batra: One important takeaway from your definition of leadership is empowering people, like that’s where your success lies and that’s what true leadership is. Cool. I think that’s a very interesting start.
You said your journey started from a software engineer to leadership. And I believe a lot of my friends and audience listening to us are in that journey itself where they would want to know about this transition, how did you make your decision, what was your role and responsibility, probably as an Engineering Manager, and then as a Director now, what kind of things you do, so that the people who are looking up to these profiles, these roles and responsibilities in their companies have a good idea of what it actually looks like. So, can you just tell us about your experience, starting from Software Engineer, then transitioning to Engineering Manager, and then leadership?
Claus Höfele: Yeah. Yeah. It’s indeed an interesting transition because the realization is that management and software development are two different positions. And of course, the domain or the companies that you work in are similar and maybe they have a similar domain, kind of challenges, but what do you actually do day-to-day is very different. So, it was an interesting transition. And it started with me being a Software Engineer. I’ve done a lot of work on mobile phones. And I also programmed a PlayStation game and bit by bit, I kind of became more of a, like a Lead Engineer. I had a very good experience and good success in actually developing different kinds of software. And my first step into leadership and management was as a Tech Lead, which every company defines this differently, but the way it was defined at the time was like, you still had hands-on work to do, but you also started to manage people. And I find this is a super-challenging position because, it involves, you know, two different kinds of jobs basically.
Kovid Batra: Right.
Claus Höfele: But it’s also like interesting because it’s kind of the first step into leadership. So, it allows you to kind of try out, hey, what is this about? Try yourself out and also see if that’s an interesting career for you because I think at some point you need to make a decision: do I continue on the Individual Contributor path or do I continue on the management path? So, I had this Tech Lead position and this was still very involved with my technical expertise of mobile app development. And then, the next step was what I would call an engineering management position, which means that it was a technology that I knew, but wasn’t super-experienced in. And I think this is also maybe a learning from management that you often support different kinds of teams where you understand the general technology, what this is about, but you probably have less hands-on experience than the most senior engineers in the team. And I think as a manager, you need to become a little bit flexible in, you know, what kind of teams and what kind of tech stacks you manage.
And then from there, it kind of evolved into managing multiple teams. So, that’s a bit how the Head of Engineering or Director of Engineering position currently is defined, that I’m supporting multiple teams, we are currently at the brink of also introducing team leads and engineering mentors for the teams, but currently, I’m managing these people directly. So, it’s kind of another level of indirection, right? So, as an Engineering Manager, you directly interact with one team and directly manage people. And then as a, maybe Head of or a Director of Engineering, it comes like a bit more indirect by managing other managers as well. And yeah, it was an interesting transition because I was able to kind of maybe try myself out, also like phasing out the actually hands-on programming, and then bit by bit coming more into this role. But it took, I feel it took like several years to actually, you know, understand what this is about, to find my way, you know, my definition of leadership. And yeah, it was an interesting journey. And it still continues, right? It never ends what you can learn.
Kovid Batra: Thanks. I think, I made you speak a lot on this one, but I have some really good thoughts around the point where you said that when you transitioned from a software engineer to a tech lead, then to a manager, I could see in every expression of yours and the words you said, the role becomes more towards taking care of the people and the technical skillset, of course, carries along because that’s innate to this particular department, or I should say, that vertical of the business where you are leading tech teams. But, as you go up the ladder in this journey of management leadership, is it for everyone, or it depends on company-to-company, how much technical contribution do you put in as a manager, as a tech lead, and as an engineering leader, I would say? Does it go narrower on that side? How does it work according to you?
Claus Höfele: I think it’s what is a tech lead, a team lead, an engineer mentor is, is often different companies have different definitions. And I think if you go beyond maybe supporting four or five people, I think it’s super-hard to still continue to be hands-on with the technology. So, my goal is to understand the problem, the technical problem that we’re working on, but my goal is not any longer to actually be able to solve it myself. And, yeah, this is basically a decision point where you also have to make sure you want to let go of software development because it’s, it’s really an amazing job. Unfortunately, there are a lot of opportunities. Like, if you go into Staff Engineer or if you work as a Principal Engineer, right? There are lots of opportunities to also show leadership, technical leadership on a, on a very high level with a very good pay and position, maybe online with different management.
Kovid Batra: Right. I think that’s where you have to take a call, what is your feeling or what is your call that whether you want to go for a technical leadership role or you want to, like actually become an Engineering Manager and then take business-oriented roles.
Claus Höfele: Yeah. And, I think being a software engineer as a background to becoming an engineer leader is quite challenging because we have to let go of quite a few things. First of all, I think you have to let go of this idea that you need to be the best engineer. I think this takes a lot of mental effort. And you also have to let go of, “I’m now the lead.” Or, “I’m now the manager. So, I get to say what people are doing.” I think you have to let go of this thought as well. And, and having a technical background, this is often the challenge I see.
Kovid Batra: So basically, the technical understanding that you gain from the previous experience of being an engineer and then Technical Lead, that helps you as a manager and a leader to probably give better estimates and be more empathetic towards how the work is done, which probably the business side doesn’t understand or relate to in most of the scenarios. So, if I’m not wrong, is it that the main skill set of an engineering manager or an engineering leader is to definitely manage teams better, lead them better, bring in the cultural aspect that motivates them, keeps them satisfied, and along with that, be properly answerable to the business by understanding the context of technology? Does that sum up the overall role of an Engineering Manager or an engineering leader in an organization?
Claus Höfele: Yeah. What’s the difference between management and what’s the difference between leadership, right? And the definition I really like is that leadership is all about people. So what you said the culture of working together, the cooperation and managing is about things, you know, timelines and money and projects, right? And I think as an engineering leader, you need to handle both. But you can’t mix, you know, both sides need different approaches. So of course, what I’m doing day-to-day, a lot is also, you know, hiring new engineers, making sure we hire the right talent, also making sure that teams are set up for success. I work with the teams on, yeah, maybe kicking off things or also handling conflict. And also, maybe celebrating. I think it’s end of the year, it’s really important to also celebrate the achievements. I think this is all about the people in the culture side. And then, the management side is, of course, also about, you know, budgets and being able to handle head counts and maybe HR wants you to fill in certain forms, and of course, also with dealing with a stakeholder. I would define the role of a Director of Engineering, maybe as a translator between the two kinds of worlds. So maybe, translating technology problems into a language that business can understand and vice versa, understanding their point of views and translating that into a language that technical teams understand. And then, on my level, it’s also a lot about maybe working at the overarching problems, like maybe defining a technology roadmap that affects multiple teams. So rather on a team level where the team directly works, maybe with the business department, I’m more looking, you know, how are the teams generally set up, how does the collaboration work and what is maybe the technical roadmap that affects multiple teams.
Kovid Batra: Right. Makes sense. I think one very important point here, you mentioned that right now you are leading, you’re Director of Engineering. Ideally, it is supposed to be a bunch of managers and tech leads working along with you to deliver, right? But in this stage, you are directly dealing with multiple teams. And I’m sure this is a situation with a lot of companies where Directors of Engineering are directly involved with their companies. Maybe they’re hiring right now, or maybe that’s a lean structure that they’re following due to cost-cutting. The most important problem one could face is context switching, right? Different teams are working on different technology, different problem statements. A lot of things get escalated in that form. Of course, there would be some people who would be, like Senior Software Engineers, but would be helping team members to solve those technical challenges. But what happens if in this, a lot of escalation comes to you, how do you handle that? And along with that, you have to do your own piece of work also, right? So, managing all this as a Director of Engineering where you have to handle multiple teams, how is that experience coming out for you?
Claus Höfele: Yeah, definitely. The management, a manager’s schedule is very super-fragmented, right? I try to block out some time also to do some more strategic thinking and have a bit more time to do, you know, deep, deep work, but at the end of the day, a good part of the job is really, like having different kinds of context, which is all over the day. You cannot completely control this. So usually, the way I work with the teams, obviously I cannot attend every meeting, but I usually define with every team a little bit on, you know, how would I be in touch with the team and with the people on the team. So, I have a lot of 1-on-1s, where we discuss potential challenges. And, I also kind of attend a few meetings, uh, one or two meetings for each team, so I get a bit of an impression on how they are working and how they are also collaborating. And, in terms of conflicts and maybe incidents or stuff coming up, I think it’s really important for me and for, for leaders in general that they try to keep the business out of their schedule, right? Like, I see, or I’ve been such a leader as well, where you have from nine o’clock in the morning to six o’clock in the evening, you know, a meeting scheduled every half hour. And, you know, I have absolutely no downtime. First of all, it’s, it’s really bad for, for your mental health, but it also leaves no space for unforeseen things. And I feel you really have to also leave space open in your schedule that people can come to you, “Hey, I have clouds, I have an issue. I want to discuss that with you.” And, to organize your work in a way that you know, you have deep work, you can do this context switches, but also you have time for unforeseen work, which always pops up, right? I think this is a real challenge, but, that’s a bit the way to make this work.
Kovid Batra: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think scheduling your day properly, compartmentalizing things that you want to do would be the first step for anyone to handle chaos, right? So, definitely a good piece of advice here.
Claus Höfele: And in the end, it’s also, you know, if you feel that you have too much on your plate, it’s also about finding people to delegate work towards, right? Like, it’s always a really nice, like a step-up challenge for other people to maybe get into hiring or to tackle important projects. So, I think a lot of leadership is also, you know, if it’s too much, getting too much for me, then I also have to organize my team in a way. And often people feel really great about these sort of challenges.
Kovid Batra: Right. Absolutely. One thing that pops up in my mind is that when you’re leading so many teams, you have so much going on in every team each day. How do you look at their success, like whether they are achieving on a sprint-basis or daily basis or monthly basis? How do you define that success for your teams? And, what kind of methods you use to actually measure that success?
Claus Höfele: Yeah. So, I’m not too much metrics-driven. In this regard, for me, it’s more a bit like a quantitative approach to having checks on the team. So, I’m attending team meetings and I see how the collaboration works. I’m in touch with them on 1-on-1s. At the end of the day, of course, also the business, the stakeholders of the team is a good feedback board to understand, you know, how well, does it currently work. And, I think for me, it’s not so much about, you know, pushing people to work harder and faster; it’s more like setting up a system that, you know, people can do their best work. So, I need to be able to organize, you know, the collaboration, the teams and how they work together in a way that, people naturally will want to do a good job. So, I’m responsible for the system, not necessarily for the day-to-day operations and outcomes.
Kovid Batra: Right. Makes sense. Makes sense. Perfect, Claus. I think that was a great talk and it was really interesting to have this discussion with you. Before we leave, I think it would be really amazing for our audience to know: what could success for an Engineering Director look like? So, just tell us about maybe one of your successes that you feel that you have accomplished so far in your career as a manager or as a leader, and what made you achieve that? Just, if you could think of an experience from your career.
Claus Höfele: Yeah, I feel the major of success of my career was also that I feel I always adapted to new challenges. So I had a really good time as a Software Engineer, but then also I felt, you know, what’s the next thing? And I was a lot into maybe user experience and understanding this kind of perspective. And I got into management and now I’m getting a bit more into facilitation. So, being super-adaptable, understanding that maybe what you have, the kind of approaches that you have used before might not work in the next challenge that you are tackling. And so, always be adaptable and always growing and always learning. I think this is my pleasure as well, because I think learning and growing is really good fun.
Kovid Batra: Cool. So, that’s your success mantra then, “keep growing.” Cool. All right, Claus. Thank you so much for your time today. Would love to connect again, discuss deeper into different aspects of management and leadership. And audience, please follow Claus his newsletter. We’ll share the link in the comment section.
Claus Höfele: Thank you so much, Kovid. It was a, was a great discussion. Thank you.
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