At some point in their careers, software engineers face a dilemma: “which track I’m going to go? management or technical path?”.

Although it might be easy to choose for many of them, there are countless misconceptions about the manager role. Consequently, some engineers move to a management track without completely understanding what it means for them and the company.

My journey

Throughout my career, I’ve always wanted to build products and change people lives through technology. As a result, I’ve worked in small-sized companies and acquired some experience in UX, product management, frontend interfaces, backend applications and even infrastructure. Afterwards, I’ve seen myself helping other engineers in their careers, giving them context about the company, hiring new people, and doing other tasks that I’ve never thought I would do.

That was the first symptom I was moving to a manager role and, also, my first mistake: I’ve never reflected on being a manager. I was very comfortable doing my job as an SWE, shipping features to production and discussing engineering best practices with other engineers. However, some skills I thought made me a good engineer aren’t necessarily relevant to make me a great manager.

I will not focus on what skills you need to be a great engineering manager. Instead, I’ll share some tips I wish I had when I transitioned to a manager role.

Understand what makes you happy at your daily job

We spend about 8 hours a day doing our job, so it’s fair that we do things that make us happy most of our time. Before diving deeply into the management area, try to list everything you’re doing as an IC. Then, ask yourself which responsibilities you’re not prepared not to do?

When you shift to a management role, day-to-day engineering isn’t your job anymore. Instead, your main goal is to make your team succeed. As a result, you will most likely do less technical work overtime and focus on people-related activities ensuring your team have all they need to do their job effectively. So, again, ask yourself: does it make you happier at work?

Sometimes you might think that when you’re feeling unchallenged at your daily job, you need to move to a management track. Even though it could be a reality for some companies, in most of them, it’s not. Therefore, you can also transition to other teams with different technical challenges, and probably you’ll have an answer about what motivates you.

That’s the most critical question you need to answer: Am I shifting to a management track with the right motivation? It’s ok if you don’t have the answer yet. There are companies in which it is common to allow their engineers to explore different roles internally and find what makes them excited to come to work in the morning, so you can speak with your manager and try to do something similar.

It’s always a good idea to gather more information before deciding, especially regarding your happiness and motivation at work.

Have a mentor

Initially, you’ll struggle with many situations, especially when it comes to people management. Then, what if you have someone to share some experiences with and learn how to handle unexpected problems?

When you start your career as a software engineer, you’ll be a junior engineer even if you were a brilliant computer science student. Indeed, when you join a tech company, you probably have a senior engineer who will guide and help you grow faster professionally. The same happens when you shift to an entirely new position.

Having someone else to have deep conversations about management helped me recognize my weaknesses, handle some unusual situations, and be more resilient in this new position. In addition, independent advice gives you a different perspective about being a great manager.

At first, I had no idea how this mentorship would work, and it takes time to have helpful and insightful mentoring. However, nowadays, I see how those shared ideas, books and feedback gave me more confidence to improve my leadership skills.

Finally, if you need some advice, let’s talk. I’m more than available to help or connect you to someone who can do it.

Keep shaping your technical skillset

As I mentioned before, you’ll most likely do less technical work when you transition to a manager. Nevertheless, it doesn’t mean you won’t do anything technical or engage in technical discussions with your teams.

Assuming you’re coming from a software engineer position, I would suggest you only make a transition if you have a solid engineering background and have faced several development cycles. In other words, I firmly believe you need a remarkable track record of consistent contributions as an individual contributor.

In my experience, that’s an excellent way to build trust with your team, contribute to technical decisions and connect with them by understanding the challenges they’re facing. Additionally, it helps you create opportunities aligned with your teammates’ goals.

Teaching, code reviewing, shipping non-critical tasks within your team, and coding side projects are great ways to keep you updated and push you to deepen your technical knowledge. As Will Larson says in An Elegant Puzzle: “focus on being an engineering leader instead of a professional people manager”.

Find your path

There are many resources on how to be a great manager. Learning is an essential part of the transition, but you must experiment with what works best.

For instance, you can read many books about doing effective 1:1s with your teammates or sharing critical feedback. But, whereas you must do it, you should try to create your ways of management by testing new approaches, adapting “by-the-book” tips and listening to your teammates’ feedback.

Also, don’t underestimate the psychological side of the process. You’ll spend most of your time dealing with people, and each individual reacts in different ways. So, be empathic with everyone, even in hard times, by studying some communication and psychological tricks.

Find your path. There’s no unique way of doing management.

So, what?

In conclusion, an engineering management journey could be difficult a good part of the time. For instance, sometimes you work on important things that are invisible and get little recognition for that.

However, your job will be rewarded by strongly influencing people’s lives, both professionally and personally. Likewise, it’s so rewarding to ship products and see that you’ve had a crucial role in making those teams work better.

You will never be fully prepared to transition, and you’ll learn most of the things during your journey. Then, read, listen to more experienced managers, make mistakes and learn with them. It’s worth it.