It’s not a promotion—it’s a career change
Going from engineer to engineering manager isn’t a step up. It’s a step sideways into a completely different job. Your output is no longer code—it’s the output of your team. That shift is harder than it sounds.
What actually changes
As an EM, you stop solving technical problems directly and start solving people problems. Your day fills up with 1:1s, planning meetings, and cross-team alignment. You’re responsible for hiring, performance reviews, and making sure your team has what they need to do their work.
The hard part: you need to stay technical enough to make good decisions, but you can’t be the one writing the code anymore.
Skills that matter
- Communication: You’re now the bridge between your team, product, and leadership. Most of your job is translating between these groups.
- Trust-building: Your team needs to feel safe telling you when things are broken. If they can’t, you’ll be the last to know about problems.
- Time management: Your calendar will try to eat you alive. Protecting time for thinking and for your team is a constant fight.
- Knowing the business: You need to understand what the company is trying to achieve so you can point your team in the right direction.
How to prepare
- Start leading before you have the title. Run a project, mentor someone, organize a team initiative.
- Keep your technical skills sharp—you’ll need them for architecture discussions and technical judgment calls.
- Read about management. “The Manager’s Path” by Camille Fournier is a good starting point.
- Find a mentor who’s already made the transition. They’ll save you from mistakes that seem obvious in hindsight.
The trade-off
You’ll have more influence over how things get built, but you’ll rarely build them yourself. Some days that feels great. Other days you’ll miss writing code. That’s normal.