Anant’s Newsletter

About a year ago, I became an Engineering Manager at Brex. The transition was fairly straightforward: I was a Staff Engineer who had indicated interest in trying out the managerial path since it seemed like a no-brainer at the time after reading about the Engineer/Manager Pendulum. Most companies are willing to give high-performing senior/staff engineers an opportunity to transition into this role when a need arises. By doing so, they get a manager who deeply understands the technical systems and can empathize with the individuals, and it also opens up opportunities for other senior engineers to fill the senior/staff leadership void that such a transition creates. It’s a win-win all around most of the time.

Prior to starting as an engineer at Brex in 2020, I was a founder across two smaller tech startups for 7+ years. That meant not only managing employees (and shareholders), but also being a driver for product/strategic direction, engineering, technical decisions, operational processes, customer support, UX design, and everything else you can think of in between those things. All this to say that becoming an EM was not my very first time in a leadership role. Being an ex-founder made a lot of the job way easier than it normally is for a first-time Engineering Manager. However, this was my first time being in the very specific job of a “frontline Engineering Manager at a tech company” where you are expected to do things like writing formal performance reviews, going through calibrations, putting up people for promotions, aligning your team’s strategy with the rest of the company, negotiating your team’s quarterly deliverables with leadership, and so on.

As I reflect back on the past year, here are 12 takeaways that have shaped my views on engineering management. Most of the ideas here are not my own, and I’ve tried to credit as much as I could in footnotes.

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