Not all MVPs can coach, and not all coaches can play.
It might sound obvious — of course some athletes are better at running a touchdown or scoring a hat trick than they are at planning the perfect lineup. The divide between what makes a good player versus what makes a good coach is one that we can all see clearly.
But, for some reason, that same divide is harder to spot when it comes to engineers and managers.
Software engineers aren’t likely to wear a championship ring or make it to the World Cup, but both require very specific skills and constant improvement. Great coaches and managers both know how to see the strategy behind the big picture and balance it with helping their team become the best versions of themselves they can be.
And yet climbing the ladder for an athlete doesn’t necessarily mean becoming a coach, just as an engineer doesn’t need to move into management to excel. Management itself is a particular skill and even the most talented developers aren’t necessarily cut out for it. Becoming a great manager and leader of a team takes assiduous work.
Salary Comparison: Average U.S. Software Engineer vs. Engineering Manager
Many people are drawn to management because of the potential salary boost. Built In gathered anonymous salary reports from employees in the United States and found the following:
- The average total compensation for a software engineer is $156,192.
- The average total compensation for an engineering manager is $202,129.
Built In found five engineers who are putting in the time and effort to become great managers — and have advice for those who want to do the same.
Zocdoc builds products and services that simplify and streamline the healthcare journey for patients and providers.
What led you to move from an engineering role into a managerial position?
As a software engineer, I always loved weighing in on product direction, shaping our technical roadmap and, most of all, mentoring and teaching other engineers. So, I decided to explore management opportunities to double down on the responsibilities I found most rewarding.
I was working at Zocdoc and spoke with my manager at the time, and they worked with me to find the perfect opportunity to develop as a manager. Fortunately, in the four years following, I’ve found all of my initial motivations held true. In my role as a manager, I’ve influenced what we build and how we build it more than I ever did as an individual contributor, and that’s even more true for the mentorship I provide, as well.
How were you supported to make that shift? What were the biggest challenges you faced after changing roles?
The transition to management was littered with challenges and required a lot of learning and development. As an individual contributor, I could only dip my toes into the management skill set before making the move, so it felt like a leap of faith at first.
Thankfully, I had a supportive environment and manager at Zocdoc when I made the shift. I gradually took on new responsibilities one by one with my manager there to support and guide me every step of the way. For me, the hardest part of becoming a manager is providing feedback to others, particularly critical feedback. Doing so requires a shift in mindset, understanding and communication. It’s important to understand that the feedback you provide can help grow, advance and guide your reports — even if the feedback is difficult to give and even harder to receive. I am thankful for the support system at Zocdoc that helped me develop the skills and mindset to do this effectively.
“Providing feedback, especially constructive feedback, requires a shift in mindset, understanding and communication.”
What advice do you have for engineers looking to move into a management role? What do you wish you had known before making that change yourself?
It is not an easy transition and there are many difficult days where you will constantly have to challenge yourself. Before making the change, you should be very honest with yourself about why you are interested in management, and what makes you feel fulfilled in your career. You should avoid moving into management for ego, prestige or because it feels like an inevitable next step. The moment-to-moment satisfaction you get as an engineer will be replaced with longer-term, more abstract victories. Your influence will become less direct and more supervisory. If you can handle those changes, you will find that becoming an engineering manager is a satisfying, exciting and rewarding move.
Headway helps people find quality in-network mental health care by removing historic barriers faced by mental health providers, payers and patients.
What led you to move from an engineering role into a managerial position? I care a lot about the humans I work with and have always been in that sweet spot between building systems, product thinking and business strategy. Because of that, being a manager has always been in the back of my mind, but I was never in a rush to explore it. Back in mid-2023, my manager shared an opportunity for me to manage the benefits team that I was the tech lead for. As a classic pro-con list maker, I weighed the benefits of getting to drive broad vision against the cons of not writing the code myself. I drew up a list but my gut said it was too soon and there was upcoming work I was really excited about building.
Some time and many lines of code later, I was lucky to be given the opportunity again and I took it. I had built great relationships with my team, had deep expertise in our codebase and it felt like the perfect place to test out management. I am a huge advocate that being a manager makes you a better engineer and vice versa, and expect to go back and forth throughout my career.
“I am a huge advocate that being a manager makes you a better engineer and vice versa, and expect to go back and forth throughout my career.”
How were you supported to make that shift? What were the biggest challenges you faced after changing roles?
My first day as a manager coincided with day one of managing a month-long incident to bring our insurance systems back online after Change Healthcare was cyberattacked. If we weren’t successful, we would deplete our runway. Very eventful! With the help of my manager and department head, I assembled 14 engineers from across the company. I needed to find the right role for each person, create motivation amidst the chaos and stay on top of rapidly evolving streams of work. As a manager, things are never fully in your control, but you can control how you respond. I helped our team stay calm and we turned a major setback into a far more resilient insurance platform.
Months later, I moved over to the patient group, a new mission-critical area. As I grew the team from two to 12 engineers, I faced challenges like maintaining focus through shifting product direction, building the right structure across teams, setting engineers up to thrive and fostering a culture of trust and openness to risk-taking. To address them, I’ve gotten deep into the weeds of our product and codebase — while also spending time with my team to understand their strengths, growth areas and what drives them.
What advice do you have for engineers looking to move into a management role? What do you wish you had known before making that change yourself?
Being a manager is related to being an engineer but is definitely a different job. If you’re reading this article then you’re already doing the research. That’s awesome! Talk to others that have done this role and get a sense of what every day is like. And if your gut says yes, take the leap.
If I can get on my soapbox for a moment — there are tons of management books out there but the best way is to learn by doing and be a quick learner when things don’t go to plan. Remember that intuition doesn’t come overnight. What’s most important is to always back yourself, trust your instincts and tailor your intuition over time.
Before I transitioned to management, I got some advice that the job can be lonely. You have new responsibilities and people are looking to you for answers. Finding great mentors, peers and a support system at work has made a world of a difference. Regardless, it is not a one-way door (Google the engineer/manager pendulum), and it’s a truly rewarding experience.
Fora Travel is a modern travel agency that offers a comprehensive platform designed to empower individuals passionate about travel to build successful businesses.
What led you to move from an engineering role into a managerial position?
I have always loved teaching and mentoring, so when my last company was growing and we needed to hire more engineers, I was excited about the prospect of helping others learn — even though I didn’t fully understand the full scope of the manager’s job at the time. For me, management felt like a natural extension of my passion for mentorship, and I was eager to explore that path.
How were you supported to make that shift? What were the biggest challenges you faced after changing roles?
My mentors consistently pushed me to understand that the tools at my disposal for problem-solving as a manager were very different than as an individual contributor. One time early in my management career, a critical project started to run behind schedule and I pulled an all-nighter to get the project back on track. My mentors helped me recognize other approaches I could have taken, like shifting engineers from another project or even renegotiating our deadlines with the client.
One of my biggest hurdles was learning how to give difficult feedback. Early on, I had an engineer that was frequently submitting subpar code and missing deadlines. I was reluctant to address these issues because I didn’t want to upset them, but that hesitation meant that they never improved. Eventually, we let them go and their reaction was, “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” As I started to push through the initial discomfort and share more feedback with my team, I was surprised to find that giving feedback actually strengthened our relationships and increased our trust. When people receive honest, thoughtful feedback, they not only appreciate the opportunity to learn but they recognize that you truly care about their growth.
What advice do you have for engineers looking to move into a management role? What do you wish you had known before making that change yourself?
My biggest piece of advice is to lean in and find opportunities to start solving manager-level problems. There’s rarely a shortage of nontechnical challenges and most managers can’t solve them all. Driving iteration of inefficient processes is often a really great space to start, as the feedback cycles are quick and results are easy to measure. Building a small but impactful track record in the management domain gives your company confidence that you’re ready for a full-time role and gives you confidence that you actually want the job!
“Building a small but impactful track record in the management domain gives your company confidence that you’re ready for a full-time role and gives you confidence that you actually want the job!”
It also helps to join a rapidly expanding company. As a company grows, so do the number of operational challenges and people who need guidance. The faster it happens, the more responsibilities will fall off your manager’s plate to anyone eager to step up. Becoming a manager means solving less and less technical problems and more and more people and process problems. If you discover you don’t enjoy these problems — that’s perfectly fine! There are plenty of leadership roles that focus on evermore complex technical problems. And if your current company doesn’t offer a path to leadership outside of management, find one that does.
Findigs is a rental screening and decisioning platform.
What first led you to move from an engineering role into a managerial position?For me, stepping into this role was driven by necessity. The company was growing quickly and hiring engineering managers is notoriously challenging. I independently recognized this was the right path forward because I saw the cracks that were starting to form in the organization firsthand. In order to sustain our growth and better support our more early-career engineers, it was a critical step to ensure the team’s success.
How were you supported to make that shift? What were the biggest challenges you faced after changing roles?
Due to the fast growth we were experiencing at the time, there wasn’t a long process of preparing to change roles. I had been getting support on the “squishy side” — otherwise known as soft skills — of engineering from external mentors for a while, which was really helpful.
The biggest challenges were finding the right balance between maintaining my technical ownership of critical business areas and investing in the growth of my team members at varying experience levels. These team members required more attention than they had previously received, and I often struggled with balancing immediate, time-sensitive needs of the company with the long-term development of my team.
“The biggest challenges were finding the right balance between maintaining my technical ownership of critical business areas and investing in the growth of my team members at varying experience levels.”
Managing this comes down to clear prioritization for myself and my team. I’ll often rank the most critical pieces of work, focus on the top two or three technical tasks and delegate the rest to other team members. This gives me space to invest in management responsibilities, and creates ownership opportunities for the rest of the team.
What advice do you have for engineers looking to move into a management role? What do you wish you had known before making that change yourself?
Some of the best advice that I received early on, which had a significant impact on me, was the importance of being intentional about building trust with your direct reports. Trust creates a foundation where team members feel comfortable sharing their challenges, celebrating their wins and communicating openly about anything else they are facing. Maintaining these relationships of candor is critical to a manager’s ability to gauge the health of the organization as it grows. Trust is certainly not a given, and it takes time and genuine care. By consciously investing in your people and relationships, you create a foundation that delivers lasting value back to the entire organization.
Perchwell is a modern data and workflow platform for residential real estate.
What led you to move from an engineering role into a managerial position?
My transition into management wasn’t driven by a singular moment but rather by a gradual realization. As a senior engineer, I naturally gravitated toward solving broader team and organizational challenges — mentoring junior engineers, improving processes and aligning technical work with business goals. Ultimately, I was drawn to management because I saw it as a path to have a larger impact — not just through the code I wrote, but by enabling an entire team to excel. I was also excited by the prospect of tackling people-related challenges and helping others grow their careers.
“Ultimately, I was drawn to management because I saw it as a path to have a larger impact — not just through the code I wrote, but by enabling an entire team to excel.”
How were you supported to make that shift? What were the biggest challenges you faced after changing roles?
Transitioning into management at a startup meant navigating a role shift in an environment where formal support systems were still evolving, which added to the challenge. Moving from clear technical deliverables to abstract managerial outcomes required a significant mindset shift. To bridge the gap, I took the initiative to self-educate — reading management books, listening to leadership podcasts and engaging with online communities.
The biggest challenge was balancing team advocacy with organizational goals, especially when they seemed to conflict. I overcame this by building relationships with experienced peers, asking questions openly and reflecting on both wins and missteps. While the process wasn’t easy, it taught me resilience and the importance of creating better support systems for those who follow the same path.
What advice do you have for engineers looking to move into a management role? What do you wish you had known before making that change yourself?
My biggest advice is to understand what management truly entails — it’s not a promotion, it’s a career change. You’ll spend less time solving technical problems and more time navigating team dynamics, advocating for your team and aligning work with organizational priorities. Make sure this shift excites you.
Additionally, don’t expect instant gratification; progress in management is slower and less visible than shipping a feature. I wish I had known how emotionally taxing the role can be — balancing team needs, organizational expectations and your own growth is challenging. Build a support network early, whether that’s mentors, other managers or communities outside your company.
Lastly, don’t lose touch with your technical roots. While you won’t be coding daily, understanding technical decisions remains crucial for building trust with your team.