At what level can you start thinking about becoming an EM?
Once you become a Senior Engineer, typically you have two options to progress. Either level up as a Staff Engineer, or become an Engineering Manager.
I was able to transition to being a manager 1 year after being promoted to Senior Engineer.
Notice the word I used in that last sentence. Transition.
Becoming a manager is not a natural progression for Software Engineers.
The skills that got you here won’t get you there.
I knew quite early in my career that I wanted to try this management thing but I didn’t know what it meant.
I could see that I had people skills. I was drawn to people's challenges.
At my first company working as a junior engineer, a memory I have is informally coaching a senior engineer on how he could better communicate with his peers.
How he could have more meaningful conversations with our manager.
And I remember telling him how I could see him progress based on the work he was doing, which inspired him and took action from it.
I had a long way to go and a lot to learn as an engineer but coaching others (even more senior than me) was something that I always enjoyed.
Becoming a senior engineer is a significant milestone. And although people skills are needed to get to it, the main driver is technical skills.
Management requires a completely different skill set.
What is your why?
What are your motivations for wanting to be a manager?
I have to tell you it’s a tough role.
It can be a lonely and thankless role. If you don’t deeply love doing it, I guarantee you will suffer.
If you aspire to be a manager for any of the following reasons, then I beg you to not do it:
More power or authority
Escaping technical work
Money
Perception of job safety
Prestige
Assuming it’s easier
It is more than okay not to want to be a manager, and there are plenty of good reasons not to.
What do I classify as good reasons for wanting to be a manager?
You genuinely enjoy mentoring and coaching engineers to grow in their roles and careers.
You’re excited by the challenge of assembling and nurturing a cohesive, collaborative team.
Creating an environment where people feel motivated and supported is important to you.
Solving interpersonal challenges and fostering a positive team culture energises you.
You see management as a way to amplify your influence by enabling the team to deliver impactful results.
You care about fostering inclusivity, psychological safety, and open communication within your team.
You get the idea. It’s all about people.
A deep and genuine care about creating an environment where people feel valued, work well together, grow their careers, and deliver amazing outcomes.
If reading these don’t motivate you, if they don’t create a tingly feeling of excitement to you, then I am sorry to say that becoming a great EM will be a nightmare for you.
Engineering Managers are not Tech Leads
Leading complex technical projects. That’s not at the heart of the EM’s job.
Senior/Staff/Principal Engineers, who have the role of Tech Leading a project are more than capable of doing that.
And it’s well within the scope of their remit.
Be given a challenge, understand all the complexities, and dependencies, architect a solution, form a plan, communicate it, work with a team to execute it and deliver the desired outcome.
If that’s what you’re interested in then you can stop reading.
Becoming an EM would be the wrong next step for you.
So now what?
If you are still reading you are fairly confident that becoming a manager is what you want to do next in your career.
There are two avenues to explore. Within your company or at a different company.
In your company (Happy Path)
Let’s start with the happy path of transitioning to this role inside your company.
The first step would be to talk to your manager.
The way I would bring this subject up is like so:
I have been thinking about my career and although I enjoy my current role I would love to explore becoming a manager as my next step. What are your thoughts about this?
At which point if you have a good manager they will probably ask about your motivation (the “why” we explored earlier) and end up saying something along the lines of:
This is great! I am excited to work with you on a plan to grow in areas and skillsets required for EMs.
I need to tell you though that in order to be able and get this role at our company there has to be an opening for it. We might reach a point where you have demonstrated you’re ready for it, but there is no open vacancy, which will mean it might take a while for you to actually take that next step.
This is an amazing start and a very likely scenario to happen.
So now, given that you have the support and backing of your manager it’s time to start thinking about how you can grow in the competencies and skills EMs require.
Broadly these are project management, people management, comms with other stakeholders, establishing or improving processes, and forming strategy.
The easiest way to practice these is through Tech Leading a big project.
What? But you said that Engineering Managers are not Tech Leads. Word for word. What are you talking about?
I know. And I stand by that - I wrote it after all.
However, by becoming a Tech Lead for a big project you have the ability to blur the line between your and your manager’s responsibilities when it comes to all of the areas I mentioned.
This can create an opportunity for your manager to take a controlled step back and let you manage it every step of the way. Both the technical aspect of it and the people as well.
That will be your chance to create a safe environment where people can do their best work. Deal with the inevitable conflict. Provide feedback to team members.
All while having your manager working closely with you and being able to guide you while this is happening.
This is the easiest and best way to prove that you have many of the skills that managers require. Albeit of course, this would not cover everything.
Following that, you’d need to work with your manager to find the right opportunity and apply for an internal EM role within the company.
What do I need to know before I do that?
Training. If your company offers any management training, get on it.
If not, you’ll need to do quite a bit of self-studying, and potentially find a mentor who will be able to guide you.
There is a chance your manager might not be very supportive, or there might be a case where you’ve executed what we’ve discussed but there is no opening within your company.
What then?
It would be time to naturally start considering roles outside of your company.
Outside of your company
Like I mentioned at the very beginning of this post: What got you here won’t get you there.
What do I mean by that in this instance?
Your CV. You’ll need to change it.
If you start applying for Engineering Manager roles, you will need to highlight your leadership skills - even if you don’t have the word “manager” in it.
An example of how you can do this.
You might have a section like this:
Senior Software Engineer at XYZ Ltd. 2022-2025
Worked on migrating a monolithic system to microservices
Drove TypeScript adoption, reducing production bugs by 25%
Coached junior developers with pair programming sessions
You can turn it into something like this:
Senior Software Engineer (Tech Lead of ABC) at XYZ Ltd. 2022-2025
Led a team of 6 in migrating a monolithic system to microservices, boosting scalability by 30%
Introduced TypeScript tech standards and best practices that reduced production bugs by 25%
Onboarded and mentored junior developers, fostering a culture of knowledge-sharing and collaboration
NOTE: I am not suggesting you lie on your CV. My recommendation here is to think how you can present what you have done in a way that is relevant for a company looking for an EM.
I recommend you do that across your CV and align your accomplishments to EM competencies and responsibilities.
This not only will allow you to highlight more relevant skills but also showcase that you know what these are to the recruiter/hiring manager who will read your CV.
Once you have a polished CV, and start applying to EM roles, you’ll quickly find out that the interview process is slightly different.
Normally it comprises of behavioural / leadership and system design interviews. You’ll need to get good at them.
The best way to do that is practice.
Find a friend who can help you do a mock interview.
If you’d like someone experienced to help you with a more structured mock interview, you can book a call with me using this link.
That’s all folks!
Revisiting my claim to you now, did I change your mind about wanting to be an Engineering Manager? If not, do you feel like you have a plan to make this happen?
Let me know in the comments below, and share this post with someone you think would benefit from it.
