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On this week’s show, Lisa and Julia meet Emma Bruce, Software Engineering manager. The conversation explores the often-overlooked transition from individual contributor to engineering manager, examining why technical excellence doesn’t automatically translate to management success and what skills actually matter when leading teams.

Emma discusses the historical lack of training for engineering managers and how the role has evolved into a more scientific one, with greater emphasis on metrics such as cycle time, throughput, and flow state. The discussion covers the challenge of aligning diverse stakeholders—from business objectives to compliance requirements—and the importance of consciously deciding what to deprioritise when focusing on specific KPIs, such as time to market. The conversation also touches on whether non-technical people can succeed as engineering managers, provided they partner effectively with strong technical leads.

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Show transcript automatically generated by Descript:

Lisa: Welcome to episode 342 of the WB 40 Podcast with me, Lisa Riemers, Julia Bellis, and Emma Bruce.

Julia: So it is great to be back here with you, Lisa. I think it’s been, well, this is certainly the first podcast that we have co-hosted in 2026. And to be honest. It was quite a way back, possibly in the summer 25 that we, um, did a double act. So it’s good to see you again. It’s been far too long.

Lisa: It’s been ages, hasn’t it?

It’s been, it feels like it’s been, last summer feels like a lifetime away and also feels like it wasn’t very long ago at all. But there’s been, I feel like there’s probably been quite a lot of things happening but. Bringing it back to slightly more recent times if we were gonna follow the format of the podcast, which also always is evolving.

What have you been up to over the last week or so? Last fortnight ish, maybe, or since last summer.

Julia: Wow. Um, let’s forget since last summer because I will just won’t stop talking. Possibly I have just come back from a really cool adventure. And, uh, I took Friday off work, got the train down to Pzi, and then spent three days walking from Pzi to Rye, which is, uh, a route called the 10 66 Country Walk.

Lisa: That’s really far, isn’t it? How, what’s the distance on that?

Julia: Yeah, it is really far. It’s very easy when you see it on a signpost and you go, oh, let’s do that. And then when you actually come to do it, it’s 60 kilometers. Day one we intended to walk 27 kilometers and we knew that was a big day because of various things happening and diversions and map reading fails.

It ended up being 35 kilometers, which was painful. We sort of, uh. Battle is very beautiful. Very beautiful. You know, the Abby and the Castle and the church, we staggered into battle after dark and I have never ever been so happy. To see the pub where we were staying and stagger up the stairs in my backpack on and collapse into bed, actually.

So yeah, it was a real adventure. Really good fun. So I’m glad I could come on the podcast and talk about it because I don’t often have such interesting weekends.

Lisa: I’m getting horrible flashbacks. When I was in Central Ambulance as a teenager and we did a 75 mile walk around Surrey over five days. But we had a similar thing.

The first day was the biggest day, but it ended up being a few miles longer than we were expecting. And it was just like, I mean, I was a, I was a teenager when it was hard enough, like I couldn’t imagine doing it now. So I’m in massive awe of you doing that.

Julia: I am quite proud of myself actually. Yes, I made it and then, then the next two days you were saying how time walks.

Distance warps when you’ve walked 30 K and you’ve still got five to go, that five feels incredibly long. But what about you Lisa? What have you been up to? I’ve

Lisa: been entirely sedentary, certainly in comparison. I’ve been, well actually no that’s not true. The last fortnight. So since the last podcast, ’cause I was on the first one this year with Matt.

Um, I had the color walk, although that’s not really a walk. It’s what? That, so the color walk is a thing that I do if I can make it work, allowing, it’s on the third Thursday of the month. And we go to old hospital fields market and meet up, and it’s on the flea market day and there’s between, normally between sort of 50 and 70 people wearing their most colorful outfits and all of your accessories.

It’s like the opposite of what Chanel would say. It’s like before you leave the house, put more things on.

Julia: Alright. Yeah, put everything on, but it is

Lisa: more of a pose than a walk like I did. It did mean I left the house. But we don’t go much further than around the market. If we do any walking at all, we sort of meet up and chat and there’s a big group photo.

But yeah, and I had a couple of events last week where I was at my desk, did a meet the author thing with my co-author and, um, the through, that’s

Julia: exciting

Lisa: talking about our book about accessible communications, which was nice. Um, it felt like the first joint thing me and Matisse have done for a while as well, so that was nice.

I was sitting here at my desk, and then I also did a, it was a session called the Intranet Hot Seat, where I was interviewing Suzie Robinson from Clear Box, talking about the latest report that’s coming out. Oh, I think this Thursday now. It is Thursday. The T, no, Wednesday the 28th, I think. No. Yes. Anyway, at some point this week it’s coming out and it’s this massive tome comparing intranet products that sit on top of SharePoint or independent to SharePoint and communications platforms.

And it’s something that I’ve been involved in over the last few years as an independent consultant. And we got to basically geek out about intranets. So that was also lovely in am midst actually doing some SharePoint stuff for a client. But

Julia: yeah, I’m quite impressed at your ability to geek out over intranets actually.

It’s quite

Lisa: niche. There’s not that many of us do.

Julia: We should find out more about that in future. How, how about you Emma? What have you been up to?

Emma: Um. A couple of, couple of trips to the home counties over the last couple of weekends. One to Bahe to see my, my mom and sister. Another one to Redding this weekend just gone.

And then, yeah, apart from that normal things during the week, but also I’ve been I sort of made the decision beginning of the year to, to look for another job. So I’ve been doing quite a bit of sort of research, trying to read up on, on various things and spending quite a lot of time kind of actually geeking out a geeking out a little bit more than normal even.

Just just trying to get my, uh, get myself sort of back up to speed with some of the things I haven’t used for a little while. You know, in advance hopefully for finding a, finding another job.

Julia: So this is really interesting actually. I think we could do a podcast on how to look for a job.

After a number of years, or even dare I say, decades in your career, you know, it changes, doesn’t it? And then. You’re doing it in a new way that you’ve never done before.

Emma: Yeah. And even the mechanism of actually looking so, going, I, I’m not a huge user of LinkedIn and every time I sort of log in, things have changed.

First time coming across any kind of AI agent, doing a, you know, having a conversation with an AI agent not actually an interview. This was, um, a recruiter that uses AI to sort of screen people. Yeah. And things change every time. I, um, I, I look and as you say, yeah, it’s, I think there’s an art to becoming used to, you know, getting back into the job market again after a while.

Julia: I had a slight anxiety pang actually when you were talking about AI agents. Crikey.

Emma: Yeah. It’s, and, and so, um. I wasn’t really sure what to expect. And actually it was quite interesting ’cau