Your Number One Job As An Engineering Manager

It’s not what you think and it’s always changing.

One month into my role as an Engineering Manager, my boss told me, “Your number one job as an engineering manager is… hiring.”

Fair enough, I said. A few weeks later, all hiring got paused. So I thought, “What’s my job now?”

“Your number one job is… retention.” Then came a reduction in workforce.

“Your number one job is… employee career growth.” But there was no promotion budget that year.

Luckily I still had a job. But I was left with one burning question: What’s really the number one job of an Engineering Manager?

The Core of an EM’s Job

If you ask 10 Engineering Managers, you’ll likely get 10 different answers. But at its core, your job boils down to this: deliver value to the business through your team.

Everything you do—every ticket, every meeting, every decision—ties back to this mission. Of course, the definition of “value” depends on your team’s focus:

• If you’re an EM for a product team, you deliver new products and features that bring in or retain business.

• If you’re managing a QA team, you ensure product quality is high.

• For an EM on a platform team, you build tools that enable teams to ship faster.

But here’s the catch:
If you only focus on the output, you will fail your team and yourself.
You might deprioritize one-on-ones and career conversations. You might incentivize people to work on weekends because “results are what matters.” I’ve seen managers like that, who are rewarded early on for delivering fast results. But when survey response shows low morale and attrition spikes, they’re the first to go.

So the question isn’t just what you deliver but how you deliver it.

How to Deliver Value Without Getting Fired

To deliver results without losing your job, you need to create an environment where your team can succeed long-term and in a sustainable way. Here’s how you can do that:

1. Build and Protect the Team

Your team is your most important asset. Until autonomous AI agents take over, your focus should be on:

• Hiring wisely: Take time to build a hiring process with the help of your team. I learned this the hard way after hiring a tech lead who was brilliant but a lone wolf. Since then, I’ve added behavioral interview questions to spot team players.

• Retention: Let your team know they’re valued. I make it a point to recognize and appreciate good work—with words as well as with other rewards.

• Trust and safety: Psychological safety isn’t just a buzzword. When my team members feel safe, they bring problems to me early, challenge ideas in meetings, and take ownership without fear.

When you invest in your people, they’ll invest in your mission.

2. Set Clear Goals and Priorities

Ambiguity is a productivity killer. Your job is to make the path clear—even when it’s not clear to you.

• Connect the dots: Help your team understand how their work ties into the bigger picture. When the long-term vision is unclear (e.g. during a reorg), focus on short-term (monthly) goals and be transparent about what you do know.

• Collaborate on goals: Work with stakeholders to set realistic and meaningful objectives. Even when the goals feel fuzzy, reduce ambiguity as much as possible before passing them on to your team.

• Ruthless prioritization: Focus on things that will either provide value to customers or improve team and system health. If no stakeholder is complaining, you’re not prioritizing hard enough.

When your team knows what’s important and why, they’ll spend less time second-guessing and more time delivering.

3. Create Processes That Serve People

Good processes are like a well-designed road—they guide the way without creating friction.

• Plan wisely: Use lightweight planning frameworks that suit your team’s size and complexity. I prefer a minimal agile sprint planning process myself.

• Standardize: Create templates for common things like decision-making and root-cause analysis. Collaborate and publish team working agreements (e.g. everyone demos for at the end of the sprint)

• Friction: Add good friction (e.g. peer reviews on PRs) and remove bad friction (e.g. person X approves all deployments).

Be careful about overloading your team with processes. Too little structure leads to chaos but too much affects creativity and speed. Figure out what works for your team.

Final Thoughts

So, what’s the number one job of an Engineering Manager?

It depends.

One day, it might be hiring. Another, it might be retention, delivering a critical project, or aligning with leadership.

But at its core, your role is always about this:

Creating an environment where your team can deliver value consistently and sustainably.

That’s the job. And it’s always changing.

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