Engineering management is one of those roles that looks simple on paper but feels very different once you're in it. At its core, it's about enabling others rather than measuring yourself only by your own output. You're not just writing code or solving problems directly anymore. Instead, you're creating the right environment for your team to do their best work, keeping them aligned, and helping them grow.
The more responsibility you take on, the less your job is about your own output. For engineers who step into management, this can feel unnatural. You're used to solving problems directly, writing code, and moving fast. You may even know the exact way to solve something, and it can feel frustrating to slow down long enough to explain it to someone else. But that's the shift.
Every engineering manager starts with the same instinct: to solve problems. It is what made you good as an engineer, and what first earned you trust as a leader. But as your scope grows, the definition of what it means to solve problems must change. Your role is no longer to fix issues directly, but to ensure the team can fix them without you.
