The best career advice comes from people who have walked the path before you. This guide distils the most impactful lessons from experienced engineering managers — the advice they wish someone had given them when they were starting out.
Relationships Are Everything
The single most important career asset you will build as an engineering manager is your network of professional relationships. These relationships provide mentorship, advocacy, opportunity, and support throughout your career. Invest in them deliberately — not transactionally, but genuinely. Help others without expecting immediate returns. Stay in touch with former colleagues. Be generous with your time and knowledge.
Your relationship with your own manager deserves particular attention. This is the person who most directly influences your career trajectory, and the quality of your relationship with them determines how effectively they can advocate for you, develop you, and support you. Invest in this relationship through regular communication, honest dialogue, and mutual trust.
Cross-functional relationships are often undervalued but enormously important. Your relationships with product managers, designers, and business leaders shape how effectively you can operate and how broadly you are perceived as a leader. Engineering managers who are respected across functions have more influence, more opportunities, and more enjoyable working lives.
Take Care of Yourself First
Engineering management is emotionally demanding. You absorb your team's stress, navigate interpersonal conflicts, carry the weight of performance decisions, and face constant pressure from multiple directions. Without deliberate self-care, burnout is not a risk — it is a certainty.
Establish non-negotiable habits that protect your physical and mental health. Exercise, sleep, time with family and friends, and activities that have nothing to do with work are not luxuries — they are the foundation that makes sustainable management possible. The managers who burn out are almost always the ones who sacrificed these foundations in pursuit of short-term performance.
Seek support when you need it. Talk to a mentor, a therapist, a coach, or a trusted friend about the challenges you face. Management can be isolating — your team does not fully understand your pressures, your peers may be competitors, and your manager may not have the bandwidth to provide emotional support. Building a support network outside your immediate work context is essential for long-term sustainability.
Play the Long Game
The most successful engineering management careers are built on a long-term perspective. Early in your career, optimise for learning over compensation. Take roles that stretch your capabilities, even if they pay slightly less than the safe option. The skills and experiences you accumulate in your first five years as a manager determine your trajectory for the next twenty.
Be patient with your own development. Management skills take years to develop, and the feedback on whether you are developing them well arrives slowly. Trust the process, invest consistently, and recognise that the manager you are after five years of deliberate practice will be dramatically more effective than the manager you are today.
Make career moves strategically. Every two to four years, assess whether your current role is still developing you. If you have stopped growing, consider a move — to a bigger team, a different domain, a new company, or a higher level. The engineering managers who build the strongest careers are the ones who take thoughtful risks at the right moments, not the ones who either stay put indefinitely or change roles every year.
Develop Your Own Management Philosophy
Over time, develop a clear management philosophy — a set of principles that guide how you lead, make decisions, and interact with your team. This philosophy should be informed by your experiences, your values, and the management thinking you have absorbed, but it should be authentically yours.
Your management philosophy provides consistency in an uncertain world. When you face a new situation and are unsure how to handle it, your principles give you a starting point. When your team wants to understand how you will behave as their manager, your philosophy provides the answer. Articulate it clearly and share it with your team — they deserve to know what drives your decisions.
Be willing to evolve your philosophy as you gain experience. The principles that serve you well as a first-time EM may need adjustment when you become a director. The approach that works with a small, senior team may not work with a large, junior team. A good management philosophy is grounded in enduring values but flexible in its application.
Give Back to the Engineering Management Community
As you develop expertise, share it with others. Mentor newer managers, write about your experiences, speak at meetups, or contribute to open-source management resources. The engineering management community benefits enormously from practitioners sharing honest, practical insights — and the act of sharing deepens your own understanding.
Be honest about the challenges of management, not just the successes. The most valuable mentoring comes from managers who share their failures, their uncertainties, and their ongoing struggles alongside their achievements. This honesty normalises the difficulties of the role and helps newer managers recognise that struggle is a feature of management, not a sign of failure.
Build the management community you wish you had when you were starting out. If your organisation lacks a management peer group, create one. If your local area lacks engineering management meetups, start one. The community you build supports not just others but also your own continued development and sense of belonging.
Key Takeaways
- Invest in relationships — they are your most valuable career asset over the long term
- Protect your physical and mental health — sustainable management requires deliberate self-care
- Play the long game — optimise for learning early and make strategic career moves every two to four years
- Develop and articulate your management philosophy — it provides consistency and clarity
- Give back to the community — sharing your experience deepens your own learning and benefits others
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is the most important piece of advice for new engineering managers?
- Invest in your one-on-ones. They are the foundation of your relationship with each team member and the primary channel through which you provide coaching, feedback, and support. Getting your one-on-one practice right from the start creates a strong foundation for everything else. Make them regular, make them high-quality, and never cancel them.
- How do I handle the loneliness of management?
- Management can be isolating because you cannot share certain information with your team and your relationship with them has an inherent power dynamic. Combat this by building a peer network — other engineering managers, either at your company or externally, who understand the challenges you face. Regular conversations with peers normalise your experiences, provide practical advice, and create a sense of belonging that the management role can otherwise lack.
- Should I specialise in a particular type of engineering management?
- Early in your career, breadth is more valuable than specialisation. Manage different types of teams (product, platform, infrastructure), work in different domains, and experience different company sizes and stages. This breadth builds the versatility that makes you effective in any management context. Later in your career, you may naturally develop a reputation in a particular area — scaling teams, turnarounds, technical culture — but let this emerge from experience rather than forcing premature specialisation.
Get Hired as an Engineering Manager
Our programme combines the career advice of experienced engineering leaders with practical tools — CV templates, interview preparation, and career strategy — to help you build the management career you want.
Learn More