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This article shares hard-earned truths for engineers becoming managers. It covers the shift from teammate to authority, handling stress and sensitive information, mastering feedback and networking, and staying effective amid meetings and politics. It ends with tips on training yourself, managing up, and finding peer support.
- Management means carrying others' emotional burdens home constantly, with no relief valve—you lose peer status and get excluded from gossip/casual moments once you hold authority over pay and firing decisions
- Your words carry outsized weight now (jokes read as orders), so managing what you say and don't say becomes a core skill, especially when you must sell decisions you disagree with
- There's no formal training for management—you have to self-teach labor law, feedback, and coaching by finding mentors, HR contacts, and peer groups on your own
- Progress feels invisible compared to engineering's quick wins, so you have to manually create milestones and celebrate small victories to stay motivated through months-long objectives