Hi, Hacker News! I’m glad you’re here! Getting front page’d there was unexpected and cool. If you’re here from there, thanks for clicking. Hope you find something useful. Lots of good discussion in the comments there and I’m planning some follow up posts Real Soon Now™ on some of the topics brought up (performance management, upward communication, etc.) so stay tuned!
Update: Part 2 of this series is now live. It’s all about performance management: how to support the folks who are struggling, and the ones quietly crushing it.
Welcome to the club. You either asked for this, or someone tapped you on the shoulder and said, “Hey, you seem responsible. Wanna be in charge of other humans?” Either way, here you are. Congrats. Or condolences. Maybe both.
Being a first-time manager is weird. You go from being great at your job to being a total beginner at a job that nobody really taught you how to do. There’s no “Manager Bootcamp.” There’s no Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering Management (ok, actually, there is but they’re scams. Just don’t.) You’re just… here now.
Your Job Isn’t to Do the Work Anymore.
I know. That part sucks a little. You were probably really good at your job. Now your job is to make sure other people can be good at theirs. You’re not the player, you’re the coach. Sometimes that means strategy and big-picture thinking. Sometimes it means shielding your team from dumb shit. Sometimes it means buying someone coffee and saying, “You’re not crazy. This is hard.”
You might miss the dopamine hit of pushing a PR or closing a ticket. That’s normal. It can be hard to feel useful when your output is meetings and docs instead of code and commits. But your job now is to build systems, not features. To coach, not to execute. To unblock and enable, not to do it all yourself.
This means you need to trust your team to get the work done instead of doing it yourself. Your instinct (especially under pressure) is going to be to fall back on the skills that got you this far in your career: to jump in, write the code, fix the bug, save the fuckin’ day. Occasionally a manager will need to dive in and do the ground-level work but that is the exception and not the rule because the reality is you have different critical responsibilities now.
Get comfortable with your impact being less visible but more meaningful.
You’re Going To Mess Stuff Up. Repeatedly.
You’ll give the wrong feedback. Or avoid a tough convo until it explodes. Or be too hands-on. Or not hands-on enough. It’s all part of it.
Nobody expects you to have all the answers. If you expect yourself to have all the answers you’re setting yourself up for a heaping dose of reality check the very first time you run into a scenario you’re unprepared for.
You’re not expected to be perfect. You are expected to notice when you screw up, own it, and get better. The goal isn’t “flawless.” It’s “fuck up better each time.”
Messing up is part of the job. What matters more is how you respond. Own your mistakes. Say the awkward thing out loud. Apologize when you blow it. Your team doesn’t need a flawless boss, they need a human one who’s willing to grow in public. That builds trust faster than pretending you’ve got it all figured out.
Be Clear. Painfully Clear.
You think you’re being obvious. You’re not. Spell out expectations. Over-communicate. Set goals in plain language. Be upfront when someone’s struggling, and just as vocal when they’re killing it. Being vague might feel “nicer” or “more collaborative” but it’s actually just three cowardices in a trench coat.
Clarity is one of the most underrated tools you have. Without it, people spin. They waste time guessing what “done” means, or whether their work matters, or if you’re secretly disappointed in them. Your job is to remove that ambiguity. Define what good looks like. Repeat yourself. Make sure people feel safe asking you to repeat it again.
As a manager one of the most important tasks you have on any given day is this: provide context. The people on your team need to have a strong understanding of why their work matters, why what they’re doing is important, and how they’re measuring up to expectations. If an engineer feels like they’re doing pointless busy work that’s a sign that you haven’t done your job correctly.
Nobody ever said, “Gee, I wish my manager had been less clear with me.”
You Probably Still Have a Manager Of Your Own. Let’s Talk About That.
Got a Good Boss? Follow Their Lead.
If you lucked into a solid leader above you, you’ve hit the jackpot. Learn from them. Learn from their mistakes (because they will make them). Ask questions. Ask questions about their mistakes! Let them sanity-check your 1:1s or feedback drafts. Tell them when you’re in over your head. Good leaders want to help you level up.
Also? When you have a rough day, they’ll know exactly why it sucks. That alone is gold.
Got a Not-So-Good Boss? Don’t Let Them Turn You Into One Too.
If your leader is checked out, incompetent, or toxic, sorry. That’s rough. But don’t let their bad habits shape yours.
Be the kind of manager you wish you had. Find support elsewhere: peers, mentors, communities, even ex-managers you trusted. Set your own standard. And yeah, keep receipts. Just in case.
Bad leadership above you isn’t an excuse to stop giving a shit.
Protect Your Energy.
Management is emotionally expensive. You’ll absorb team stress, cross-functional chaos, and your own endless self-doubt. That’s the gig. Your calendar fills up fast, and those blocks aren’t just “meetings,” they’re your priorities on full display.
You have to take care of yourself. Whatever that looks like: therapy, journaling, going for a silly little walk, blocking off calendar time to think instead of react. Do that. Often.
Something important to keep in mind here: burnout doesn’t always show up as dramatic exhaustion. Sometimes it sneaks in quiet. You stop caring. You feel numb. You start defaulting to “whatever.” That’s burnout too. Watch for it in yourself and in your team. If you burn out, your team burns with you. I’ve been on good teams that have crumbled when their manager crashed. I’ve been that manager. It sucks.
Your Wins Are Now Your Team’s Wins.
When you were an IC, you probably did some incredible work. Shipped cool features. Fixed nightmare bugs at 2 a.m. Made things people loved. You got the praise, maybe even a shiny award or two. That was nice. Hate to break it to you but those days are over.
Good managers don’t get trophies because we’re no longer Doing The Things, we’re Empowering The Things. There’s a reason an Engineering Manager has never won a Webby award.
At my day job we use a platform called Bonusly for people to give little shout-outs (shouts-out?) to their peers for doing something awesome. I rarely get any awards here, but people on my teams get them all the damn time and to me that speaks incredible volumes. When I see someone from another team thank one of my ICs for their help or recognizing something they’ve done that’s a checkmark in my win column too because I’m empowering that. I’m creating an environment where this happens on the regular.
Final Thought
You’re not going to get it all right. None of us do. But if you show up with humility, curiosity, and a genuine desire to make work suck less for the people around you? That’s real leadership.
You’ve got this. And even on the days you feel like you don’t, that’s okay too. Welcome to the deep end.