Engineering Manager
roadmap.sh: https://roadmap.sh/engineering-manager
Suggested path through the Engineering Manager nodes. Each node links to its lesson when written.
Nodes
The Role
- What is an Engineering Manager?
- IC vs Manager
- Tech Lead vs EM
- EM vs Engineering Director
- Manager of Managers
- Player-Coach Model
- Responsibilities & Scope
- Common Myths
- Making the Transition
- Imposter Syndrome
People Management
- 1:1 Meetings
- Active Listening
- Giving Feedback
- Receiving Feedback
- Radical Candor
- Difficult Conversations
- Coaching & Mentoring
- Career Development
- Growth Frameworks / Ladders
- Performance Reviews
- Performance Improvement Plans (PIPs)
- Recognition & Rewards
- Motivation
- Psychological Safety
- Building Trust
- Delegation
- Managing Underperformers
- Retaining Talent
Team Building
- Hiring & Recruiting
- Writing Job Descriptions
- Interviewing
- Structured Interviews
- Onboarding
- Team Topologies
- Team Composition
- Diversity & Inclusion
- Remote & Distributed Teams
- Team Culture
- Offboarding
- Succession Planning
Leadership
- Leadership Styles
- Servant Leadership
- Situational Leadership
- Leading by Example
- Decision Making
- Influence & Persuasion
- Emotional Intelligence
- Conflict Resolution
- Change Management
- Leading Through Uncertainty
- Managing Up
- Managing Former Peers
Process & Execution
- Agile
- Scrum
- Kanban
- Sprint Planning
- Estimation
- Roadmapping
- Prioritization
- Project Management
- Risk Management
- Velocity & Throughput
- DORA Metrics
- Engineering Metrics
- Incident Management
- On-Call Management
- Postmortems / Retrospectives
- Technical Debt Management
Technical Leadership
- System Design Awareness
- Architecture Decisions
- Code Review Culture
- Engineering Standards
- Technical Strategy
- Staying Technical
- Build vs Buy
- Vendor Management
Strategy & Business
- Vision & Mission
- OKRs & Goal Setting
- Aligning with Business
- Stakeholder Management
- Budgeting & Headcount
- Resource Planning
- Working with Product
- Working with Design
- Cross-Functional Collaboration
- Org Design
Communication
- Written Communication
- Verbal Communication
- Running Effective Meetings
- Async Communication
- Transparency
- Storytelling with Data
- Presenting to Leadership
- Communicating Bad News
Self-Management
- Time Management
- Prioritization & Focus
- Avoiding Burnout
- Continuous Learning
- Building a Peer Network
- Finding a Mentor
- Ethics in Management
Resources
See resources.md.
Project ideas
- Design a complete 1:1 system: a recurring agenda template, a running notes doc, and a quarterly career-growth conversation framework you could use with a direct report.
- Draft a competency ladder for an engineering team (junior through staff) with clear expectations per level, then map a mock review against it.
- Write a runbook for incident management and on-call: severity definitions, escalation paths, a blameless postmortem template, and the DORA metrics you’d track to improve.