The truth about being a manager

I vividly remember most of my own journey into engineering management over the years. Throughout my career, I’ve also mentored several people taking the step from engineer to engineering manager. It’s a challenging and often lonely journey, and here are a few truths most new managers realize the hard way. (If you aren’t a manager yourself, you might just learn a bit about your manager’s situation.) The things no one tells you about being a manager: You’ll bring work home with you more often than not. The difficult conversation you’re dreading, the “stupid” business decision you will need to explain to your team, the office politics you need to handle, or the team member struggling silently with a personal crises. You will need to learn how to manage stress and rumination – and you’ll need to learn it fast. You’re not “part of the team” anymore. You are the manager. Even if you try to be “one of the gang,” you’re not, the dynamic has shifted. The team might not want you at their lunch every day (you’re welcome, but not always). They will have private conversations when you’re not there. They will talk about you behind your back, and that’s okay. You will feel the distance slowly but surely. The shift might start subtly, but after the first salary negotiation or the first tough decision, you will definitely feel it. You will probably miss being part of a team a lot. You need to be careful with every word. You can’t joke like before, because a casual remark might be interpreted as a directive or cause unnecessary worry. You can’t just blurt out an idea, or the team will wonder if it’s a decision and they need to change direction. Many managers aren’t clear on when it’s just their personal opinion, an idea, or an order, so most people learn to listen carefully and overthink things. You must learn to be quieter. Let others take the space and help them dare to speak up with their ideas. You will encounter business decisions you think are terrible but you still have to sell to your team. You cannot vent your frustration to the people you lead. You have to be professional and diplomatic even when you disagree. You have to be the calm in the storm. Hopefully, you learn this before you make too many mistakes. Because once you lose their trust, it’s hard to get it back. You’ll probably feel very lonely. If you’re lucky, you’ll have a peer group of other managers. Nurture those relationships! You will need them. Make sure you have at least one peer you can talk to openly, discuss difficult decisions with, laugh with, or vent to when needed. You will carry knowledge you cannot share. Re-orgs, performance issues, budget cuts, upcoming business decisions, or a team member’s personal crisis will weigh heavy on you. You must learn to handle questions diplomatically, keep your emotions in check, and encourage your team even when you disagree with the direction. You need to network and understand the business. You need to build solid relationships with other colleagues around your team, the product manager, designer, business analyst or other people that affects your teams. You also need to get to know people in other teams and other departments to do a good job. You can’t just focus on the tech. Get to know people in other departments such as sales, marketing, IT and customer success. You need to know the company’s KPIs, understand the business, the data, and the company strategy by heart to really support your teams. You will often feel a lack of progress. As an engineer, your day ended with clear output: a feature shipped, a refactor completed, a design finalized. As a manager, you often finish the day unsure of what you actually accomplished. Most work take weeks, not days. It’s way too easy to just get stuck in meetings and busywork, don’t let that happen to you! Figure out where you can have the most impact. Set up clear goals, track them and celebrate the wins. Be the person who drives progress, not just the person who manages the calendar. You will miss being an engineer. Often. You will miss the ability to hunker down, solve a hard technical problem and ship something, without thinking about office politics or rhetorics. You will miss “just doing things”. You will not get the training you need. Most companies have no or very little manager training. You’re supposed to just magically know how to give difficult feedback, present decisions confidently, navigate labor laws, or handle group dynamics. You are on your own. If you’re lucky, you’ll get a great manager who can support you and show you how to have great 1:1s, valuable development talks and give you clear feedback. The more senior you become, the more you will have to take full responsibility for your own development and feedback. - Read up on lots of things by yourself. Set clear goals for yourself and what you need to learn. - Read up on the basics: parental leave, sick leave, vacation policies and laws. Most unions have lots of information and also free trainings for managers. - Double-check with HR until you’re confident. Build a good relationship with your HR friend if you can. - Find a mentor, a senior manager you admire, and ask for guidance. There are lots of great books and material out there. It’s up to you! (Some suggestions to start with here.) You need to learn about feedback, fast. Most managers are terrified of giving clear feedback because it’s uncomfortable and scary. This means you will likely inherit teams with dysfunctional behaviors that you must fix. Don’t wait. The whole team notices when someone gets away with bad (or just lazy) behaviour. This also means that you probably won’t get the feedback you need either. Ask your peers and directs you trust to give you honest, critical feedback. Practice receiving it gracefully. Be a role model in both recieving and giving feedback. If you want your team to be open, you must be the first to admit when you’re wrong. And don’t forget to give feedback upward to your own manager. (Read more about feedback here.) You will make mistakes and you won’t be liked by everyone. You will make mistakes. Hopefully, they aren’t catastrophic, and hopefully, you learn from them. If you’re “lucky,” people will point them out. You will also not be liked by everyone. Sorry, but it’s true. This can be very uncomfortable, especially if you’re a people pleaser. To be a good manager, you must make unpopular decisions, have tough conversations and sometimes let people go. You will be the messenger for bad news. You can try to be liked by everyone, but you’ll fail and lose their respect. Or, you can try to be a great manager, make the hard calls, give clear feedback, and earn respect – even if some people dislike you. I vote for the latter. You need to be the adult in the room. At all times. Even when you’re exhausted and don’t want to be. You need to be the calm in the storm, a role model who absorbs the anxiety and defuses immature behavior. You must help your team navigate their conflicts, and be the expert when you find yourself tangled in one as well. As Tanya Reilly describes it in “The Staff Engineer’s Path”: “How you behave is how others will behave. You’ll be the voice of reason, the ‘adult in the room’. There will be times when you’ll think ‘This is a problem and someone should say something’ … and realize with a sinking feeling that that someone is you’”. You need to learn how to sell. You need to sell decisions and business opportunities to your team to get them excited. You need to sell your team’s features to other departments or the whole company. You must advocate for and brag about your team (this is especially difficult for us Swedes with our Jantelagen). And you need to advocate fiercely for your direct reports regarding salaries and promotions. You must learn how to manage up. In a perfect world, everyone would have a great manager, and the more senior a manager is, the better they would be at it. This is not a perfect world. You need to learn how to bring bad news to senior leadership and navigate office politics. You might find yourself doing some of your manager’s work and handle their frustration as well. Be clear on your goals and accomplishments, support your manager, and handle disagreements diplomatically. As Tanya Reilly writes in the excellent book “The Staff Engineer’s Path”: “Managing up includes understanding your boss’s priorities, giving them the information they need, and solving the problems that are in their way – in other words, helping them be successful. Their success gives them social capital that they can spend to help you.”. This is definitely true for managers as well. You will feel powerless and frustrated. Decisions will be made without your input. Budgets will be cut. Markets will shift. You will be frustrated by other managers’ poor choices and the slow pace of progress. You must learn to manage your own emotions so you can be the calm anchor for your team when they vent their frustration at you. You will get a view of the whole picture. By talking to other managers, teams, and departments, you will spot dependencies and misunderstandings before they explode into crises. You can solve friction points before they become blockers. You will understand the context your team needs to succeed, and see the systematic issues that needs to be resolved. Protect this perspective. It is too easy to get bogged down in meetings and busywork and lose this bird’s-eye view. Your mission isn’t just managing your team, it’s connecting the dots that no one else can see. Being a manager can be fun and fulfilling. Best case, you become the manager you always wished you had. You will feel immense pride when your team succeeds and ship something that impacts the business or users. Nothing beats watching someone you coached flourish and become amazing at their job. It’s a great feeling to see someone you hired and believed in later crush it in their new role. It can feel great to collaborate with other managers and improve things for your teams. You will learn more about yourself and others than you ever thought possible. It’s hard work, it’s lonely, but if you do it right, it will hopefully feel worth it. * As always, this blog post is written by me, without any AI, so all errors are my own.