Moving from an Individual Contributor (IC) role to an Engineering Manager (EM) role is one of the most meaningful and misunderstood transitions in an engineering career. It’s not just a change in title. It’s a fundamental shift in mindset, responsibility, and how you define success, one that often shapes how people later think about long term career direction in engineering management, as discussed in The EM Career Path: IC Again, Director, or Something Else.

I’ve made this transition myself multiple times: moving into management, moving back into IC roles, and then stepping into management again. Some of those transitions were by choice. Others were circumstantial.

The first time I became a manager, it wasn’t because I had a burning desire to lead people. It was because, in that company, management was the only visible path forward. After a certain point as an engineer, there simply wasn’t another option. So I took the role, not fully prepared, not fully confident, and definitely not fully equipped.

Looking back, I was lucky. I learned a lot on the job. But I also learned something important: not every transition happens on your terms, especially early in your career.

Sometimes you choose management. Sometimes management chooses you.

If you’re lucky enough to have a choice, my honest advice is this: pause and think deeply before stepping into any role you’re not comfortable with not just management. Titles don’t matter nearly as much as alignment. This post is meant to help you think through that alignment clearly and practically.

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Why People Choose the Engineering Manager Path

People move into engineering management for many reasons. Some want to lead and mentor. Some enjoy solving organizational problems more than technical ones. Others want broader impact or career growth.

Whatever the reason, there are a few non-negotiable prerequisites you should honestly assess before taking this path. These apply to most management roles, not just engineering management.

Before you move forward, ask yourself the following questions. Ideally, the answer to most,if not all, of them should be yes. If the answer is no, you should at least be willing to actively work toward changing that.

If you’re unwilling to do that, do yourself a favor and do not move into management.

1. Do you genuinely enjoy helping others grow?

It’s relatively easy to design your own growth path. Managing a team means investing deeply in multiple growth paths. all at once.

You’ll need to spend real time coaching, guiding, listening, and supporting people through challenges that may have nothing to do with code. For some people, this is energizing. For others, it feels like a constant drain.

If helping others grow feels like a chore rather than a privilege, this path will be hard.

2. Are you comfortable delegating, even when you know you can do it better?

This is especially difficult for strong ICs.

When you’re great at your job, delegating can feel risky. You know the edge cases. You know the shortcuts. You know how to get it done “right.” Letting go requires trust and restraint.

Yes, you can still review code. Yes, you can still guide architecture. But you will never have enough time to do everything yourself.

If you’re unwilling to trust others with meaningful ownership, management will frustrate you and your team.

3. Can you redefine success as team success?

As a manager, your impact becomes indirect.

You won’t be the one writing the critical code or designing every system. Your success depends on your team’s success, their wins are your wins, and their failures are your responsibility.

If you can’t genuinely celebrate team outcomes without needing personal credit, this transition will feel empty.

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Understanding the Shift in Responsibilities

One of the biggest misconceptions about engineering management is that it’s just “less coding and more meetings.” That undersells the magnitude of the change.

You are moving from doing the work to executing the work through others.

You might be a 10x engineer. You might be exceptional at system design or solving complex problems. But as a manager, you’re no longer solving those problems directly. you’re enabling your team to solve them effectively.

That shift shows up across several key areas.

People Management

This is the most obvious and the most underestimated part of the role.

People management includes coaching, career development, setting expectations, and performance reviews. In many companies, performance reviews alone can consume a significant amount of time and emotional energy.

I’ll be honest: I find writing my own performance review exhausting. Writing reviews for an entire team and then participating in calibration sessions with directors or VPs,is even harder.

Very few people love performance reviews. But I’ve found that if you genuinely care about rewarding the right people fairly, the process becomes meaningful, even if it never becomes easy.

Helping someone get promoted, recognized, or properly evaluated is deeply gratifying. It’s not uplifting work, but it is impactful work.

Team Execution

As a manager, you are accountable for delivery.

That means aligning the team around priorities, removing blockers, improving processes, and making sure work moves forward, even when things get messy. Your role is less about speed and more about consistency and sustainability.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

You’ll spend a lot more time working with product managers, designers, program managers, and stakeholders.

Clear communication, expectation-setting, and negotiation become core skills. Technical excellence alone is no longer enough.

Strategic Input

Managers influence roadmaps, technical direction, and long-term decisions, even when they’re not writing the code themselves.

Your perspective shifts from “How do we build this?” to “Should we build this at all?”

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The Mindset Shifts That Matter Most

The hardest part of becoming an engineering manager is not learning new processes or running meetings. It is unlearning the instincts that made you successful as an individual contributor. What helped you stand out as an IC can actively work against you as a manager if you do not consciously adjust how you think about your role.

From “I build” to “We build”

As an IC, your identity is often tied to what you personally ship. You write the code, design the system, solve the problem, and see a clear connection between effort and outcome. That direct feedback loop is motivating and deeply satisfying.

As a manager, that loop largely disappears. Your success now shows up through other people’s work, and that takes time to internalize. You have to genuinely celebrate wins that do not have your fingerprints on them and accept responsibility when things go wrong, even if you did not directly cause the issue. This shift can feel uncomfortable at first, especially for high performing ICs, but once it clicks, it becomes incredibly powerful. You stop optimizing for individual brilliance and start optimizing for collective impact.

From deep focus to constant context switching

If you enjoy long, uninterrupted blocks of deep work, management can feel jarring. Your day becomes a sequence of conversations, meetings, and decisions. One moment you are discussing a production issue. The next moment you are talking about someone’s career goals. Shortly after that, you are negotiating scope or priorities with product.

This constant context switching is not a flaw of the role. It is the role. Learning how to manage your energy becomes just as important as managing your calendar. Some days you will not feel productive in the traditional sense, but you will still be highly effective by unblocking others and creating clarity.

From problem solver to enabler

One of the hardest habits to break is the instinct to jump in and fix things yourself. As an IC, solving problems quickly is rewarded. As a manager, doing that too often takes away learning opportunities from your team and creates long term dependency.

Your role shifts from having the best answers to asking the best questions. Instead of explaining how you would approach a problem, you learn to ask how the team would approach it and then support them along the way. This does not mean you stop caring about quality. It means you care enough to let others learn and grow.

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Tips for a Smoother Transition

Start with empathy

You are no longer managing tasks. You are managing people with different motivations, strengths, fears, and personal circumstances. Active listening, regular one on one conversations, and genuine curiosity go a long way. Many issues that appear to be performance problems are actually clarity, trust, or communication problems underneath.

Empathy is not about being soft. It is about being effective.

Find or build a support network

Management can be isolating. You often cannot vent downward, and you may not always feel comfortable venting upward. Having peers who are dealing with similar challenges makes a meaningful difference.

That support can come from a mentor, a group of fellow managers, or even a small circle of trusted colleagues. You do not need to figure everything out on your own, and you should not try to.

Redefine what value means to you

One of the quiet struggles for new managers is losing the dopamine hit that comes from shipping code. You will need to consciously redefine value for yourself. That value might come from seeing someone on your team grow, watching a system remain stable over time, or helping the team navigate ambiguity successfully.

These wins are slower and less visible than shipping features, but they compound over time and often have a much larger impact.

Set expectations early and explicitly

Align with your own manager on what success looks like in your new role. Depending on the situation, that might mean delivery, team health, hiring, or stabilization. Once you have that clarity, make sure your team understands what you expect from them and what they can expect from you.

Misalignment here creates unnecessary stress for everyone involved.

Stay technically relevant without clinging to it

Your technical background still matters. It helps with credibility, decision making, and asking the right questions. However, if you hold on too tightly by reviewing everything, making every decision, or being the fallback expert, you become a bottleneck.

The goal is not to prove that you can still do the work. The goal is to make sure the work succeeds without you.

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Common Pitfalls to Avoid

Micromanaging

Micromanagement often comes from good intentions. You want high quality. You want things done right. You want to help. Over time, though, it signals a lack of trust and slowly kills ownership. If you hired capable people, give them space to operate and hold them accountable for outcomes rather than methods.

Avoiding hard conversations

Feedback is uncomfortable. It never truly gets easy, whether you are giving it or receiving it. Avoiding tough conversations does not make problems disappear. It only makes them harder to address later.

Clear, timely, and respectful feedback is one of the most important responsibilities you have as a manager. Think of feedback as an investment in someone’s growth rather than a confrontation.

Holding onto IC work for too long

This is one of the most common traps for new managers. Coding feels familiar and safe, while leadership work is often ambiguous and uncomfortable. When things get hard, it is tempting to retreat into IC work.

Over time, this hurts both you and the team. Your leadership responsibilities suffer, and your team never fully steps into ownership. Letting go is difficult, but it is necessary.

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Final Thoughts

The transition from IC to EM is not easy.

But if you have the right interests and characteristics, it can be deeply rewarding, not just professionally, but personally.

You’ll learn how people think. You’ll grow more empathetic. You’ll build lasting professional relationships. You’ll see problems and people more clearly.

There will be discomfort. Feedback will always be hard. Some days will feel messy and uncertain.

That’s normal.

Practice helps. Experience helps. And over time, you grow into the role.

Great managers aren’t born. They’re made.

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If you’ve made this transitionor or are thinking about it, I’d love to hear your story. What worked for you? What didn’t? Drop a comment and share your perspective.