What should be the key qualities one should try to work on while starting as a Head of Engineering in a growing startup?

Do you have an idea and are looking for potential counterpoints?

I ask, because that's the kind of question a head of engineering is hired to answer.

@SortOfTested my question is more towards getting to know about people management.

If I am to rephrase this, it can be, "What an ideal Head of Engineering should be like?"

@F1973 the latter has been suggested by most.🙄

I was tech leader for a startup for a year and here are my two cents:

The main objective of any head of xxx is to make sure that xxx is doing as fine as it can. This seems obvious but it's not. And it's hard, especially for a tech profile that is used to factual performance checks ("does it compile? Is it performant?").

In leadership, the things you will set up cannot be easily checked. But here is what I paid attention for :
- code quality / conventions : you want to setup clear guidelines on how code is reviewed, set up a lint...
- dev time : you know that dev is hard. You want to protect your team from context switching, useless meetings, difficult managers... This is your job to suffer from that instead of your team.
- business goals : a dev that know *why* she codes a feature is essential. You need to understand the business deeply and make sure your team does too.

I strongly advise you to read "powerful" from Patty McCord (HR of Netflix). Very insightful.