In Part 1, I wrote about the hard parts of moving from individual contributor to management — losing the IC identity, swimming in ambiguity, juggling stakeholders, learning to delegate, and becoming a coach. I promised tips. A few months into living this role for real, here is what actually helped me, not the polished advice from a slide deck.
None of this is universal. These are the habits that stopped me from either drowning in other people’s work or quietly sliding back into being the best engineer on the team again.
Redefine what a good day looks like
As an IC, a good day meant commits, PRs, green builds, a bug closed. As a manager, some of my best days produce zero lines of code and still feel empty if I score them the old way.
I started ending the day with three lines in a notebook:
- Who did I unblock?
- What decision got clearer?
- What did I learn about someone on the team?
If two of those have an answer, the day counted. That small ritual fixed more of my identity crisis than any leadership book. Your output is now leverage, not commits. Measure leverage or you will feel like a fraud every Friday.
Protect the 1:1 like it is production
I used to treat one-on-ones as optional calendar filler — cancel when “real work” piled up. That was a mistake. The 1:1 is the only reliable place where people tell you the truth before it becomes a ticket, a resignation, or a Slack rant.
What works for me:
- Same day, same time, every week. Reschedule, do not cancel.
- Their agenda first. Mine second. Silence is fine; do not fill every gap.
- One career question every few weeks: “What do you want more of in six months?”
- Notes after, not during. Looking at a laptop the whole time kills trust.
If someone is stuck, the 1:1 is where you hear it early. If you only hear it in standup, you are already late.
Delegate outcomes, not chores
My first attempts at delegation were terrible. I handed people half-specified tasks and then hovered, or I kept the interesting design work and gave away the boring glue. Both patterns say the same thing: I do not trust you yet.
Better pattern:
- State the outcome and the constraints (“this needs to ship before month-end and must not break the batch job”).
- Leave the how open unless safety or compliance forces a path.
- Agree on check-in points up front, not surprise drive-bys.
- Review the work product, not the person, in public; coach the person in private.
Delegation is not dumping. It is a deliberate trade: I give up control of the path so the team owns the result. When I catch myself rewriting someone’s PR because “it would be faster,” that is usually ego, not urgency.
Stay technical enough to smell smoke
I still write some code. Not the critical path of the sprint — more like spikes, review depth, and the occasional nasty bug that needs a second pair of eyes. In a Java/Spring shop that is still new terrain for me after years of .NET, that hands-on time is how I stay honest about estimates and complexity.
The line I try not to cross: if the team cannot ship because I am in meetings, I am too deep. If I cannot read a design doc and ask a sharp question, I am too shallow. Aim for the middle. You do not need to be the best engineer in the room. You need to know when the room is about to walk off a cliff.
Write the feedback down before you say it
Verbal feedback in the moment is fine for small stuff. For anything that might sting, I draft it first. Structure that helps:
- What I observed (specific, recent, not “you always…”)
- Why it matters (to the team, the customer, the person)
- What good looks like next time
- Offer of help
Writing slows me down enough that I do not lead with frustration. It also means I am consistent if the same theme comes up later in a review. Surprise feedback in a performance cycle is a manager failure, not an employee failure.
Build a peer network outside your team
Management is lonely in a way IC work is not. You cannot vent downward. Venting upward has politics. Peers in other teams — people who are also figuring out the same messy people problems — are gold.
I set a recurring coffee with two other new-ish managers. No agenda. We trade war stories, calendar disasters, and the occasional “is this normal?” sanity check. Half the value is realizing you are not uniquely bad at this.
Ask your manager for training wheels
Hard conversations, PIPs, messy stakeholder fights — I do not wing those alone. Early on I told my manager: for the sharp edges, I will gather facts and come back with a proposed path; we decide together until I have scar tissue.
That is not weakness. New managers who are thrown into every storm alone either freeze or overcorrect. Partnership on the hard 5% keeps the other 95% learnable.
Accept that not everyone will like every decision
As an IC I optimized for being helpful and well-liked. As a manager I still care about trust, but I cannot optimize for universal approval. Prioritization means saying no. Performance means saying the hard thing. Hiring means choosing one person and disappointing others.
If everyone is happy with you all the time, you are probably avoiding the job. Aim for respect and clarity. Likability is a nice side effect, not the scoreboard.
Keep one small craft habit
I still tinker — a weekend cluster, a side spike, a deep dive into something I do not fully get yet. Not because I need another side project on my CV, but because craft keeps me curious and slightly humble. The day I only speak in roadmaps and status updates is the day I become a worse coach for engineers who still live in the code.
You do not have to ship side projects. You do have to stay close enough to the work that your advice still smells like reality.
The short list I wish I had on day one
- Measure days by leverage, not commits.
- Never cancel the 1:1.
- Delegate outcomes; review results; coach in private.
- Stay technical enough to detect nonsense.
- Write hard feedback before you deliver it.
- Find peer managers who will tell you the truth.
- Use your manager as a partner on the hard calls.
- Choose clarity over being liked.
- Keep a thin thread of hands-on craft.
The bridge from IC to manager is not a promotion ceremony. It is a months-long identity rebuild. Some days you will miss the clean dopamine of a green build. That is fine. The win now is a team that ships without you in every PR — and people who grow because you got out of their way at the right moments.
If you are standing on that bridge right now: start with the 1:1 and the notebook. The rest compounds.