Transitioning from a senior developer to an engineering manager is one of the most significant career shifts in tech. After several years in management roles across different companies, here are the essential lessons I wish I had known when I started this journey.

1. Your Success Is Now Measured by Your Team’s Success

As a developer, success was often individual—code quality, feature delivery, problem-solving skills. As a manager, your impact is amplified through others.

What This Means in Practice:

  • Focus shifts from doing to enabling: Instead of writing the critical piece of code yourself, you ensure someone on your team can do it effectively
  • Celebrate team wins publicly: Make sure your team members get recognition for their achievements
  • Take responsibility for failures: When things go wrong, shield your team and take ownership

Example from My Experience:

At Getir, when our ad management platform successfully handled a 300% traffic spike during a major campaign, my pride came not from any code I wrote, but from seeing how the team had architected a resilient system and responded brilliantly to the challenge.

2. Communication Becomes Your Most Critical Skill

Technical skills remain important, but communication becomes your superpower. You’re now translating between:

  • Technical teams and business stakeholders
  • Individual contributors and upper management
  • Different engineering teams with competing priorities

Key Communication Practices:

For Technical Context:

❌ "The database is having performance issues"
✅ "User queries are taking 5+ seconds due to missing indexes on our main table, 
   affecting 15% of our users. We need 2 days to optimize this."

For Business Context:

❌ "We need to refactor the authentication service"
✅ "Investing 1 sprint in authentication improvements will reduce login failures 
   by 60% and enable faster feature development for the next quarter."

Tools That Help:

  • Regular 1:1s: Weekly conversations with each team member
  • Architecture Decision Records (ADRs): Document important technical decisions
  • Sprint retrospectives: Create safe spaces for honest feedback

3. People Problems Are Often System Problems

Early in my management career, I thought performance issues were always individual problems. I learned that most people problems are actually system problems.

Examples of System vs. People Problems:

Symptom People Problem Thinking System Problem Reality
Developer missing deadlines “They’re not managing time well” “Estimates don’t include testing time and unexpected dependencies”
Low code quality “They don’t care about quality” “No time allocated for code review and technical debt”
Team conflicts “Personality clashes” “Unclear requirements and competing priorities”

My Approach to Problem-Solving:

  1. Ask “why” five times before attributing issues to individual performance
  2. Look for patterns across team members
  3. Examine processes before examining people
  4. Create psychological safety for honest feedback about systemic issues

4. Technical Leadership Evolves but Remains Crucial

You might write less code, but your technical involvement actually becomes more strategic.

How Technical Leadership Changes:

Before (IC Role):

  • Deep dive into implementation details
  • Own specific components or features
  • Solve complex algorithmic problems

After (Management Role):

  • Architect system-level solutions
  • Make technology stack decisions
  • Guide technical direction and best practices
  • Coach others through complex problems

Staying Technical as a Manager:

  • Code reviews: Stay involved in architectural decisions
  • Proof of concepts: Build small prototypes for complex features
  • Technical RFC process: Lead discussions on major technical decisions
  • Learning time: Block calendar time for exploring new technologies

Example: At Definex, I didn’t code the entire middleware solution for Garanti Bank, but I:

  • Designed the overall architecture
  • Made key technology choices (Spring Boot, PostgreSQL, Redis)
  • Guided the team through complex integration challenges
  • Contributed critical pieces during tight deadlines

5. Building Culture Is Building the Product

Team culture directly impacts product quality, delivery speed, and long-term sustainability.

Cultural Elements to Intentionally Build:

Learning Culture:

  • Encourage experimentation and learning from failures
  • Provide budget for conferences, courses, and books
  • Create internal tech talks and knowledge sharing sessions

Ownership Culture:

  • Give team members autonomy over their areas
  • Involve them in architectural and product decisions
  • Support their ideas and let them drive initiatives

Quality Culture:

  • Make time for testing, code review, and technical debt
  • Celebrate quality improvements, not just feature delivery
  • Use metrics that matter (user satisfaction, system reliability)

Practical Culture Building:

At Argela Technologies, we established:

  • “Failure Friday” sessions: Monthly discussions about what went wrong and what we learned
  • Architecture office hours: Weekly sessions where anyone could discuss technical challenges
  • Quality metrics dashboard: Visible tracking of code coverage, performance, and bug rates

The Hardest Part: Letting Go of the Keyboard

The most difficult transition for many technical managers is reducing hands-on coding time. Here’s how I’ve learned to handle this:

Strategies for Staying Engaged:

  1. Pair programming sessions: Occasionally pair with team members on interesting problems
  2. Side projects: Keep small technical projects for learning new technologies
  3. Open source contributions: Maintain technical skills through community projects
  4. Technical mentoring: Guide junior developers through complex implementations

Finding Fulfillment in the New Role:

  • System thinking: See the bigger picture of how technology serves business goals
  • People development: Watch team members grow and achieve their career goals
  • Strategic impact: Influence product direction and technical strategy
  • Problem solving at scale: Address organizational and process challenges

Advice for New Engineering Managers

  1. Don’t try to be the same kind of manager your manager was: Find your own style based on your strengths
  2. Invest heavily in relationships: Strong relationships make everything else easier
  3. Learn to delegate effectively: Start with low-risk tasks and gradually increase scope
  4. Accept that you’ll make mistakes: Use them as learning opportunities
  5. Find a mentor or peer group: Other engineering managers who can provide guidance and support

Conclusion

Engineering management is fundamentally about amplifying your impact through others. It requires a different skill set but offers the opportunity to shape not just code, but careers, teams, and organizational success.

The transition isn’t always easy, but for those who embrace the challenge, it can be incredibly rewarding to see your team and organization thrive.

Are you considering the transition to engineering management, or are you a current manager facing similar challenges? I’d love to discuss your experiences and insights. Connect with me on LinkedIn!