Engineering manager : rôle et posture

Engineering manager roles and posture

This article is not a method nor a universal truth. It is a personal experience report on what the engineering manager role has taught me. There are no claims to demonstrate, only a desire to share honestly what I have built in this role. This is the first article of a series that will explore, each time with a different focus, what this profession has brought to me.

Instead of presenting my own principles, I prefer to share the citations and principles that people from my career path (colleagues, mentors) have conveyed to me, and tell you what they bring to my daily life. The first episode focuses on the role and posture of an engineering manager. If these articles open paths for some people, I would be already delighted.

A reference before the citations: Engineering Management for the Rest of Us by Sarah Drasner. It is a highly recommended book, with excellent content. In a relatively short format, she covers a multitude of subjects and formalizes numerous concepts and tips in a very simple way. If you read only one book on the subject, this one is it.

Thank you Sarah for this dedication, obtained during DotJS 2025 where we were both speakers and had a brief exchange. I will still quote a piece of advice from the book: ask explicitly for the expectations your team members have of you. It is a very healthy exercise, and you will see that each individual has very different needs and expectations.

This also highlights an important necessity: you will have to adapt to each person in the team. One method will not work with everyone, otherwise it would be magic.

Manager vs. IC: hands on, hands off

Whatever you do, the team must know and be able to do it, apart from management aspects. (Florent Dubost) All my engineering team management models have always maintained a technical aspect in their work. The percentage varies from one person to another, but they always had their hands in it. For me, engineering manager is an extended role of the individual contributor (IC) role, not a role that substitutes it.

This is also what I interpret: reserving tasks and subjects as a chief is a bad practice. If we want to be able to rely on our team, the entire team must be able to help us. How to function the team in case of vacations if you isolate development stages, planning, or specific tasks? The posture towards the team: trust and delegation

Your priority is your team, then the individuals who make up your team, and finally the projects your team must achieve. (Kenny Dits, my manager for many years at M6) I was fortunate to have humanistic managers. I believe it is necessary to prioritize the team to build trust, and with this trust, there is no longer any fear to face the accomplishment of objectives.

For prioritization, you will sometimes have to abandon projects or objectives to protect individuals or your team. This also means that it may sometimes be necessary to remove someone from the team for the good of the team. This will be your responsibility, so be prepared. You do not sacrifice a team for an individual or a project.

Furthermore, your team will be present when there is a more significant need, because they know that if they solicit you, it is for a subject that really matters. The priority goes from the base to the summit: first the team, then the individuals who make it up, and finally the projects. Yes, it is a troll reference to the test pyramid, a model that everyone knows, everyone cites, and everyone ends up retouching at their own pace because it no longer says much. I spoke about it in a conference with Jules Poissonnet, my former intern: Testing is cheating!

Challenge posture: unblocking and growth

What is holding you back? (Yann Verry, my former colleague, who told me this several times) A manager is also someone who challenges and who allows their team to get out of their blocks. It is also being there to unblock situations, mentor, accompany in decisions. A manager is also there to make sure that the individuals who make up their team can blossom and progress. What serving their team means concretely

I operate as follows, I basically trust and afterwards, if needed, I discuss with you if there are things to reconsider. (Étienne de Thoury, my current Head of at Scaleway) The idea is simple: avoid micromanagement, give freedom. When we become managers, we sometimes feel stress and find ourselves wanting to follow everything, manage everything.

This is often our own managers pushing us, without wanting to. When an n+1 asks for ultra-precise reporting, there is not much choice left but to start following everything. I see it differently: information itself is not a power. Knowing to whom to forward it is much more, because it will always be more relevant coming from the person who truly masters it.

This stress is often less a question of control than a question of confidence in oneself. If I entrust you with a task even though I am not 100% sure of the result, if I do not trust you...