How to level up as a software engineering manager
Welcome! I'm excited to help you map out your growth and level up your engineering leadership. To help me tailor our sessions, could you tell me a little about your current experience level (e.g., years in management, team size) and what area you feel is currently the biggest bottleneck to your growth?
I manage multiple teams or a large team (15+ people); my bottleneck is scaling myself and developing other leaders.
It is great to meet you! Managing multiple teams and supporting over 15 engineers is a major milestone, but it is also the exact inflection point where the execution strategies that got you here will start to break down.
When you are leading at this scale, your primary challenge is shifting from direct management (doing things yourself or directing individuals) to indirect management (building systems, processes, and leaders who scale your impact). To do this effectively, we have to start by establishing your baseline across the core pillars of engineering leadership.
Before we dive into concrete delegation frameworks and leadership pipelines, let's start with a quick diagnostic question to see where your time is currently going.
Which of these three areas currently drains the largest portion of your personal daily energy and schedule?