I’ve been managing engineers for over twenty years, which mostly means I’ve had twenty years to get things wrong and occasionally learn from it. Along the way I’ve collected a short list of things managers should do, a longer list of things they shouldn’t, and one piece of advice that underpins the lot.
Let’s start with the shouldn’ts, because they’re more fun.
Don’t manage the metrics
Somewhere out there is a manager staring at a dashboard of story points, cycle times and lines of code, convinced they’re managing. They’re not. They’re watching numbers while their team quietly works out how to make the numbers look good. Metrics madness produces exactly one thing reliably: people optimising for the metric instead of the outcome. Working software is the primary measure of progress. Everything else is commentary.
Don’t hide bad news
Hiding bad news is always, without exception, the worst thing you can do. It doesn’t go away. It compounds, like interest, except the currency is trust and you’re the one going bankrupt. Tell people early, tell them plainly, and give them a chance to help. I’ve never once regretted delivering bad news promptly. I have regretted every delay.
Don’t let the loudest voice win
Every meeting has a Lion and a Mouse. The Lion talks first, talks most, and talks over. The Mouse, often the newest person, the most junior, or someone from an underrepresented group, sits on an idea that might be the best one in the room. If you let volume decide, you get the Lion’s idea every time and you’ll never know what you missed. Speak last. Invite the quiet ones in directly. Keep the Lion fed but caged.
Don’t micromanage
If you hired clever people and then tell them exactly how to do their jobs, you’ve paid a specialist’s salary for a typist’s output. Push decisions down to where the information lives. When someone comes to you for permission, ask them what they’d do. Then, most of the time, say “sounds good”. People who say “I intend to…” rather than “may I?” are thinking. That’s what you wanted, remember?
Don’t be ruinously empathetic
This one catches out the nice managers. Caring about someone but never challenging them feels kind. It isn’t. It’s letting them walk around with spinach in their teeth for years because you didn’t want an awkward moment. If you care about people, tell them the truth about their work. Specifically, privately, and quickly. Feedback withheld out of kindness is just failure delivered later.
Right then. On to the shoulds.
Do start with people
Every decision, every proposal, every fire that needs fighting: start by asking how it lands on the humans involved. Not because it’s fluffy. Because it works. People who feel safe, valued and trusted do better work, stay longer, and tell you the truth. Every time I’ve seen this ignored, the bill arrived eventually, with interest.
Do ask the question
My favourite tool costs nothing and fits in one sentence: “What problem are you trying to solve?” It’s astonishing how often the honest answer is “I’m not sure” or, worse, “one we don’t actually have”. Ask it before starting work, before buying tools, before reorganising anything. It cuts through noise like nothing else I’ve found.
Do make yourself available
Early in my career a manager told me: “I work for you. My job is to make sure you can do your job.” It rewired my brain. Your team doesn’t exist to serve you; it’s the other way round. And availability is not a perk. It is the job. The quiet message, “just checking in, no agenda, are you doing OK?”, opens more doors than any formal process ever will.
Do get out of the way
My entire management philosophy in two points: make sure your people have everything they need, then get out of the way. That’s it. The hard part is the discipline to actually do the second bit when every instinct says to hover.
Do manage the pressure, not the people
Pressure isn’t the enemy. Thoughtfully managed, it’s how people grow. Unmanaged, it’s how they burn out. Your job is translator: turn business demands into something the team can act on, and turn the team’s reality into something the business can hear. Transparency in both directions makes hard situations manageable. Silence makes them toxic.
The one that matters
Here’s the advice I give every aspiring leader, and it’s the only bit of this article worth remembering:
Don’t focus on being a good manager. Be a good person.
Everything above is downstream of that. The frameworks help, the books help (and I’ll happily bore you about them in the comments), but if you show up as someone who is honest, who cares, and who tells the truth kindly, most of management sorts itself out.
And if you’re doing the opposite of everything in this article and it’s working for you, do let me know. I’ll want to study you. From a safe distance.
What would you add? What have I got wrong? Push back in the comments. I’d be disappointed if nobody did.