A new engineering manager spends month one finding out what is true.
On this page
Month 2 changes exactly one thing. Month 3 builds what outlasts them.
The mistake almost everyone makes is continuing to do the job they were good at.
Manager work produces nothing visible for weeks. Code produces something in an hour.
You got the title and nobody handed you the job description.
The missing job description is normal. It is why the first 90 days go badly for so many people.
I became a manager at Zalando and founded the Digital Media AdTech team from zero.
I hired the first engineers into it.
I now run 1:1s and write performance reviews as Deputy Engineering Manager.
Here is what those 90 days actually contain.
What mistake does almost every new engineering manager make?
You keep doing the job you were good at. Reviewing the pull requests, taking the hard ticket, fixing the incident at 9pm.
Doing the old job feels productive and the team is delivering, so nothing looks wrong.
Six weeks later an engineer has quietly disengaged, and the roadmap has no owner.
Your skip-level thinks the team has no direction.
Direction and workload are now your problems, and you were writing code.
The uncomfortable part. The work that makes you a good manager produces nothing visible.
You will feel the pull constantly. Everyone does.
Days 1 to 30: what do you actually need to find out?
Four things, and none of them require changing anything.
What the team actually does week to week.
Including on-call, and the system only 1 person understands.
What everyone has stopped mentioning. How your own manager will measure you in 6 months.
What each person would do if they had your job.
Do not change anything structural in the first month.
You do not have the information and you will spend credibility you have not earned.
Talk to everyone, one at a time
Every person on your team, your peers, and your manager.
Include the 2 or 3 people outside the team who depend on you most.
Same 3 questions each time:
- What is working that I should not break?
- What is broken that everyone has stopped mentioning?
- If you had my job, what would you do in the first month?
The question about doing your job gets you the real answer.
People will tell a new manager what they would do. Far more freely than what they want.
Write down what the team actually does
The work, week to week, including the invisible parts.
On-call, support requests, the one system only 1 person understands.
Find out how you are measured
Ask your manager directly. “In 6 months, what will make you say this went well?”
If they cannot answer, that is the most important thing you learned this month.
Start 1:1s in week one
Weekly, 30 minutes, their agenda.
If it turns into a status update, ask a different question.
“What is on your mind that we have not talked about?”
Stay quiet long enough for an answer.
Days 31 to 60: what one thing should you change?
The one that makes the next 3 fixes easier.
Usually it is unclear priorities, or an on-call rota destroying one person.
The cause can also be a review bottleneck, or one unhappy engineer nobody has named.
Change one, and tell the team what and why.
Let the change run long enough to see whether it worked.
Nobody knows what the priority is
Write down the top 3 things for the quarter, in order.
Say no to something visible, in front of the team.
The saying no is the part that makes it real.
The on-call is destroying someone
Look at who gets paged and how often. If 1 person is carrying it, that is a retention problem with a 3-month fuse.
Review or release is the bottleneck
At Shopify I took deploys from 4 a week to more than 10.
I did it by removing 100 flaky tests.
Removing the flaky tests was unglamorous, and it changed the team’s whole rhythm.
1 person is unhappy and nobody has said so out loud
An unhappy engineer is the most urgent problem and the least visible. Deal with it now, while it is still a conversation.
Days 61 to 90: build the things that outlast you
Write down what good looks like at each level
Most engineers have never read a real promotion packet.
Engineers are guessing at a bar written somewhere they cannot see.
Show them the bar. This single act does more for retention than anything else on the list.
Have the performance conversation you are avoiding
There is one. There always is.
6 weeks from now it will be harder. Someone will have wasted 6 weeks not knowing.
Say the sentence plainly, early in the meeting, and then stop talking.
“I do not think the last quarter was at the level we need.”
“I want to be specific about why.” The kindness is in the clarity.
Start hiring properly, if you are hiring
Write the scorecard before the job ad. I wrote the long version of that argument here.
Give away your best project
Whatever you are still holding because it is easier to do it yourself.
Hand it to someone with room to grow into it.
Let the new owner do it worse than you would for a while.
What should a new engineering manager stop doing in week one?
Four things, starting in week one.
Being the reviewer of record on your team’s pull requests. Read them, do not block them.
Taking tickets on the critical path, when you could take the ones that can slip.
Answering questions someone on your team could answer. And being in every meeting when you could send someone.
Sending someone else to the meeting is a development opportunity and it buys you hours.
Why does a new engineering manager’s feedback loop break?
As an engineer you knew within a day whether you were doing well. Tests pass, feature ships, incident closed.
As a manager you find out in about 6 months and the signal is noisy.
A 6-month noisy signal is why new managers burn out while their teams are fine.
Nothing tells them they are succeeding.
2 things help. Keep a written list of what you changed and what happened.
A written list gives you evidence rather than a feeling.
Get an outside read from someone who has done the job.
Your own manager will soften the feedback, and your team cannot give it.
How do you know if management is not for you?
Three signals, and they show up inside 90 days. You resent the meetings rather than finding them boring.
You feel relief every time you get to write code.
Three months in you still have not had a single conversation you found interesting.
Going back to an IC track after trying management makes you better at it.
Staying in a job you dislike does not make you better at anything.
Common questions
Should a new engineering manager still write code?
A little, and never on the critical path. Take the tickets that can slip. Then nothing waits on you when a person problem eats your week. Reviewing to stay current is fine. Being the reviewer of record makes you a bottleneck. It takes ownership away from the team.
What if you inherit a team you did not hire?
Assume the previous manager had reasons you cannot see yet. Spend the first month asking what is working before you touch anything. Every change you make in week 2 costs credibility you have not earned. The person you would move first is often the one holding something invisible together.
How do you run a 1:1 that is not a status update?
Weekly, 30 minutes, their agenda. When it drifts to status, ask what is on their mind. Then stay quiet long enough for an answer. The silence is the technique. Most managers fill it within 4 seconds and never hear the real thing.
When should you have the first hard performance conversation?
Inside the first 90 days, and there is always one. Say the sentence plainly early in the meeting, then stop talking. Six weeks from now it is harder. The person has wasted 6 weeks not knowing. The kindness is in the clarity, not in the softening.
What does an engineering manager do?
Decides who does what, removes the things blocking them, and writes down what happened. The output is the team’s output, which is why it feels invisible at first. The job is not senior engineer with meetings. The biggest change is that your own hands stop being the way work gets done.
The short version
Month one: talk to everyone, write down what is true, do not change anything.
Month 2: change exactly 1 thing, the one that makes the next fixes easier.
Month 3: write down the bar, have the hard conversation, give away your best project.
Stop doing the job you were good at.
Nobody else on the team can do the one you have now.
You can have this with someone who has done it.
Leadership training is 150 euro a session, or 400 a month.
I have sat on both sides of the table, including the leadership loop.
The one that keeps rejecting people with vague feedback about scope.