Balancing Technical Skills and Management in Engineering

An Engineering Manager's Existential Anxiety Let me tell you a secret that every engineering manager carries: we're all grappling with existential anxiety. During recent one-on-ones with my mentee managers, our conversations inevitably drifted to the same question – how do we find meaning in this career? Our days are filled with meetings and communications. We translate technical complexities into executive summaries, spend weeks perfecting two-page documents for senior leadership, and shuttle messages between layers of management. We're the diplomatic corps of the technical world, translating between engineering complexity and business strategy. But in quiet moments, a persistent question echoes: What do we really do? If we stepped away from management tomorrow, what tangible skills would we carry? What value do we truly add to society, beyond being sophisticated middlemen? After years of wrestling with this burden, I've found an antidote: regularly leaving the comfort of abstraction and diving into real problems. It means handling customer tickets personally, feeling their frustration firsthand, and experiencing the satisfaction of troubleshooting alongside your team. You see, management is built on layers of abstraction. The higher you climb, the more removed you become from ground truth. I've met managers who've become so disconnected they can no longer interpret their own team's operational dashboards. When asked about their primary API's availability and its customer impact, they stumble, having lost touch with these fundamental metrics. The solution isn't to abandon managerial responsibilities but to regularly break through these layers. Get your hands dirty in the codebase, sit in on customer support calls, understand the operational metrics that drive your team's success and really emerge yourself in that tricky design discussion. This keeps us technically sharp and provides the emotional anchoring we need to find meaning. The value in management isn't found in meetings or documents – it's in the tangible improvements we enable, the problems we help solve, and the people we help grow. But to access this meaning, we must regularly step out of our abstract world and reconnect with concrete reality. Only then can we truly understand the value we bring to our teams, organizations, and society. So to fellow engineering managers wrestling with similar self-doubts: don't shy away from the trenches. Embrace the complexity of ground-level problems. Stay connected to the reality your teams face daily. In doing so, you'll not only become a more effective leader but also find the deeper meaning that makes this challenging career worthwhile.

Two engineers with identical skills. One gets promoted, one stays stuck. Here's why. The difference isn't technical ability. It's rarely about who writes better code. Engineer A stays stuck because they: Focus solely on assigned tickets. Keep knowledge to themselves. Wait for direction on what to build. Communicate through code alone. Solve immediate problems. Engineer B advances because they: Identify system-level improvements. Document and share their insights. Propose solutions to unaddressed needs. Translate technical decisions to business value. Create patterns that prevent future issues. I've watched this play out repeatedly across tech companies. Technical skills get you in the door. But visibility, leadership, and communication get you promoted. The most overlooked truth in engineering careers? Your impact beyond your code matters more than your code itself.

I’ve spent nearly a decade mentoring, guiding, and managing engineers as a Principal Engineering Manager. And whenever someone asks me: “How do I grow to the next level?” Most people expect answers like: → System design → Code quality and other factors Those are hygiene. The real shift happens in how you choose to create impact. And over the years, I’ve seen two clear types of growth paths: 1. Incremental Engineers They’re reliable. They’re consistent. They keep the system afloat when no one else is looking. They reduce tech debt quietly. They make alerts go from noisy to signal-rich. They take a flaky test case and make it production-ready. This has quiet impact, but it builds over time. You get Compound credibility with this type of working style. You trust them with anything because they’ve earned it, over 100 small wins, not one loud one. 2. Transformational Engineers These folks move like product managers with a deep tech context. They see the bottleneck, and instead of working around it, they rewire the system. They introduce a new infra layer. They sunset a decade-old tool. They change how an entire team ships software. Their strength is Conviction + velocity. They’re not afraid to take bets. They know when to ship fast, when to pause, and how to bring people along. But you don’t have to be just one. The best engineers I’ve worked with knew when to go heads-down and when to go head-first. → When to say “I’ll fix it” → And when to say “Let’s rethink it” But if you’re always fixing bugs, adding logs, and cleaning old scripts, you're growing sideways. And if you're always chasing big changes without owning the maintenance, you're risking team trust. Real engineering growth comes from mastering both mindsets. → Incremental for stability. → Transformational for velocity. And the judgment to know when to switch. That’s what takes you from respected to irreplaceable.

The Hidden Shift Every Engineering Manager Must Face When I transitioned into engineering management at Microsoft , I thought the key to success was rooted in my technical expertise. After all, I had spent years mastering code, designing solutions, and owning deliverables. But soon, I learned a lesson that reshaped my entire career. Early in my new role, I tackled the team’s technical challenges head-on, diving into problem-solving the same way I did as an engineer. Yet something felt off. Despite delivering solutions, I noticed gaps in team morale, alignment, and overall performance. One day, a mentor pulled me aside and said something that stuck with me: “You’re solving the wrong problems. Your job isn’t to code the solution—it’s to build the team that can do it better than you ever could.” That was my wake-up call. I realized that engineering management is 80% people and 20% engineering. My real role wasn’t just in technical delivery—it was in unlocking the potential of my team, fostering trust, and building alignment. Here’s what I wish I had known from the start: • Engineering management is about translation, not execution. Your primary task is to bridge strategy with systems, ensuring your team is aligned to business outcomes. • Your technical skills take a back seat to your leadership skills. You need to guide, coach, and empower—not micromanage. • Conflict resolution becomes more important than debugging code. Navigating team dynamics is the new challenge. At Amazon Connect today, I carry forward these lessons. The technical wins still matter, but the true legacy lies in the people I help grow and the culture I help shape. So here’s my question to you: What was your wake-up call when transitioning into leadership? What lesson reshaped how you approach your role? Let’s share our insights—because leadership, like engineering, is a skill you can always refine. #EngineeringLeadership #PeopleFirst #GrowthMindset

6 things I wish I knew about management before I became an EM: 1. Your calendar is no longer your own. The job is 70% context switching between tactical work and strategic thinking. Block focus time on your calendar religiously. You'll need it :) 2. Technical excellence alone won't cut it. Your ability to influence, communicate vision, and build trust across the organization matters far more than your coding skills. At this stage my team's coding skills are far beyond mine, and that's great. I can still hold high-level technical conversations but I let them own the ultimate implementation. 3. You'll write less code (sometimes no code, like myself!), but your impact multiplies. Success is now measured by your team's output, not your own individual contributions. If you're a high achiever like myself, you may have to find a new way to measure your own impact. 4. Tough conversations never get easier—you just get better at having them. Learning to give (and receive) clear, constructive feedback is a skill you'll constantly build. (I teach an entire module on feedback in my course for this reason!) 5. Being decisive amid uncertainty is a critical part of the job. Perfect information doesn't exist—you'll need to make calls with incomplete data. Your team is often looking for answers you may not feel fully confident about. You need to acknowledge and own that discomfort. 6. Your team's growth is your growth. The best engineering leaders focus on creating more leaders. Helping your individual contributors build influence builds your own influence in return. Being in engineering leadership is never easy as you move from managing projects to people, but it's so incredibly worth it.

There's a profound paradox in technical leadership that I've been contemplating lately: as we climb the leadership ladder, our hands-on coding time often diminishes, yet our need to maintain technical sharpness grows ever more critical. This brings to mind an ancient Chinese wisdom that deeply resonates with my journey: '學如逆水行舟，不進則退' - learning is like rowing upstream; not advancing means retreating. In technology, this truth echoes with particular clarity. Our technical skills, like a craftsman's tools, require constant honing to maintain their edge. What fascinates me most is how hands-on coding transforms the leadership dynamic. When I review pull requests or pair program with my team, it's not just about the code - it's about creating a shared language of understanding. These moments of technical immersion reveal insights about my engineers that no status report could ever capture: their thought processes, their creative approaches, their growing edges. Beyond skill maintenance, I've discovered an unexpected joy in these moments of coding. Despite the demands of leadership, these focused sessions of problem-solving provide a unique sense of accomplishment. There's something deeply satisfying about creating tangible solutions alongside my team, turning abstract concepts into working code. Recently, I've discovered that maintaining this technical connection isn't just about skill preservation - it's about authenticity in leadership. When we engage directly with the challenges our teams face, we don't just earn respect; we nurture a deeper understanding of our technical ecosystem. What intrigues me most: How do you maintain your technical edge while leading? What unexpected insights have you gained from staying hands-on with your team's work? #TechnicalLeadership #Engineering #SoftwareDevelopment #Leadership #PersonalGrowth