How Engineering Managers Are Evaluated

In this lesson, we walk through how managers are evaluated, what “meeting” versus “exceeding” expectations looks like, and how we as ICs can help them succeed, which in turn helps us.

• We emphasize that a manager’s core responsibility is delivering team impact—not promotions, not firing—so our goal is to help them maximize that impact.
• We learn that strong managers are influential: they build relationships, earn trust, and can meaningfully sway decisions both across and above the team.
• We outline “managing down,” which includes recruiting top engineers, retaining high performers, setting priorities, enabling growth, and dealing directly with low performers through feedback, PIPs, or transitions.
• We highlight the importance of retention as a key evaluation metric—if everyone wants to leave a manager’s team, leadership sees that as a failure.
• We explore “managing up,” where managers frequently provide updates to directors/VPs, take ownership of escalations, and proactively communicate timelines, issues, and product health to leadership.