Engineering Manager

topic on 4 shows · 19 statements across 17 episodes

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19 statements about Engineering Manager, every show

IN DEPTH Insight
Steep technology inflections demand IC-led cultures rather than managerial hierarchies
“If you want to be able to really, like, accelerate through one of those steep technology inflections, The people who generally know the best about the technology are actually the ICs. So you have to, like, elevate them, you have to, like, protect them, you hav…”
Jay Parikh Aug 27, 2026 ▶ 37:00 The most expensive mistake in outsourcing your tech stack | Jay Parikh (EVP CoreAI, Microsoft)
LENNY'S PODCAST Prediction Not checkable as stated
Verrilli: Tech will see more 'EM light' hybrid tech lead roles
“So the idea of like engineering manager light For want of a better term is the thing that I'm definitely think that we'll see more and more of. It's like not quite the technical member of staff, although that must be lovely. But certainly not the kind of like …”
Tom Verrilli Aug 2, 2026 ▶ 44:31 This CPO regrets that product management exists | Tom Verrilli (CPO of Whatnot)
Fung: Engineering managers should start as ICs before managing people
“On the manager front, I think giving time for managers that join to be able to go deep and to do that before supporting people. And then they actually like end up building really great rapport with the team. Like, because if not, I think sometimes as managers,…”
Fiona Fung Jun 21, 2026 ▶ 51:48 What happens after coding is solved? | Fiona Fung (Claude Code & Cowork)
Singleton: Hands-on engineering managers have the ideal skill profile for AI orchestration
“It turns out being an engineering manager, as long as you stay very close to the code and are able to continue to craft it yourself, is actually a great skill profile for being able to make agents work for you and for your team in this in this age.”
David Singleton Mar 20, 2026 ▶ 58:21 Dreamer: the Agent OS for Everyone — David Singleton
LENNY'S PODCAST Prediction Not checkable as stated
Wu: AI will enable engineering managers to manage far more than 6-8 engineers
“My sense is I think managers will be able to manage much larger teams in this world. Kind of like how, you know, like software engineers are managing 20 to 30 codexes. My sense of these tools will allow managers, people manage to be higher leverage and will al…”
Sherwin Wu Feb 12, 2026 ▶ 22:08 OpenAI’s head of platform engineering on the next 12-24 months of AI | Sherwin Wu
MacInnis: Executives must publicly call out every single product bug to managers
“Every time you see a bug, every time you see a bug, not most of the time, every time you go and you drop it at the feet of the product manager or the engineering manager, every time. In public, preferably.”
Matt McGinnis Dec 28, 2025 ▶ 1:04:38 “I deliberately understaff every project” | Leadership lessons from Rippling’s $16B journey
Huyen: Engineering managers prefer headcount while VPs prefer AI coding agent subscriptions
“Would you rather have access could you rather have, give everyone on the team, like very expensive. Coding agent subscriptions, or you get an extra head count, right? Let's say it's like maybe like and almost everyone could say the managers could say head coun…”
Chip Huyen Oct 23, 2025 ▶ 44:21 Al Engineering 101 with Chip Huyen (Nvidia, Stanford, Netflix)
IN DEPTH Insight
Stauch: Traditional software customer feedback loops take months to reach engineering
“Traditionally you've got solutions engineers, you've got customer success staff, sales, AE, they talk to customers. Maybe the SE here is a good idea. They communicate that to a product manager. Product manager talks to the engineering manager about that. Maybe…”
Jake Stauch Oct 23, 2025 ▶ 50:27 Go hard early: How lessons from Verkada shaped this AI-native IT platform | Jake Stauch (Serval)
IN DEPTH Assertion Not checkable as stated
fal employs over 30 engineers with zero dedicated engineering managers
“Yeah, we don't have engineering managers. We have around like. 30 to 34 engineers. We do have leads. Obviously we have leaders in the In the team, but you know, we don't have this engineering manager role. Everyone is always, like, contributing, writing code. …”
Gorkem Yurtseven Oct 22, 2025 ▶ 54:33 The pivot that paid off: How fal found explosive growth | Gorkem Yurtseven (Co-founder and CTO)
Rachitsky: Every software engineer is becoming an AI engineering manager
“Essentially everyone, every engineer is turning into an EM, engineering manager, coordinating all of these junior AI engineers.”
Lenny Rachitsky Oct 19, 2025 ▶ 20:53 How to measure AI developer productivity in 2025 | Nicole Forsgren
Wu: Running parallel AI agents turns every engineer into an engineering manager
“One of the cool kind of features of Devon, I'd say, is, you know, if, as an engineer, you're working on, let's say, four different tasks today, you know, you just give one to Devon number one, you give the second one to Devon number two, the third one to Devon…”
Scott Wu Jul 28, 2025 ▶ 1:23:27 🕰️ The Oral History of Windsurf (ft. Varun Mohan, Scott Wu, Jeff Wang, Kevin Hou, Anshul R)
LENNY'S PODCAST Assertion Not checkable as stated
Larson: Engineering managers shifted from 50%+ hiring time to almost zero interviews
“Like a lot of engineering managers are spending half their time or more hiring like 18 months ago, and now they're doing like two interviews a month or less, maybe zero interviews a month.”
Will Larson Jan 7, 2024 ▶ 5:21 The engineering mindset | Will Larson (Carta, Stripe, Uber, Calm, Digg)
Atawodi: Strong PM-EM partnerships require knowing personal milestones and career ambitions
“Do you know your engineering manager's birthday? It's the day they showed up in the world. It's the most important day for them. It's the day they showed up in the world in the world. Do you know their birthday? Do you know their work anniversary? Do you know …”
Ebi Atawodi Dec 3, 2023 ▶ 1:24:25 Crafting a compelling product vision | Ebi Atawodi (YouTube, Netflix, Uber)
IN DEPTH Insight
Elliott-McCrea: 12 reports is the maximum span for effective management
“12 people is sort of the upward limit of where most people can manage effectively. You know, six to 12 with eight kind of being the sweet spot is just kind of how much most people can sort of juggle the amount of context you need for each individual in order t…”
Kellan Elliott-McCrea Aug 17, 2023 ▶ 19:10 How to supercharge your engineering org | Kellan Elliott-McCrea (Adobe, Dropbox)
IN DEPTH Insight
Elliott-McCrea: Shielding engineering teams from company chaos causes them to misalign
“Actually, one of the early stereotypes about engineering managers in our industry is as the shit umbrella, you know, just gonna keep people from being distracted by all the crazy. And what that is, is those teams end up just drifting off. You know, you talk ab…”
Kellan Elliott-McCrea Aug 17, 2023 ▶ 53:54 How to supercharge your engineering org | Kellan Elliott-McCrea (Adobe, Dropbox)
Stripe engineering managers take annual 'engineercations' to retain operational context
“I advise engineering managers at Stripe that they should do an engineer occasion sometime in their first quarter to six months at the company gives you a tremendous amount of context for what your teams are actually experiencing. And then for folks who do it o…”
David Singleton May 4, 2023 ▶ 48:32 Building a culture of excellence | David Singleton (CTO of Stripe)
Miller: Sprint and project management have shifted onto engineering managers
“So I think like 10, 12 years ago, everyone expected that they would have scrum masters and scrum masters have like largely in many companies just kind of disappeared. But then you think, well, where did that responsibility go? Because someone has to do Project…”
Nikita Miller Apr 6, 2023 ▶ 19:45 Driving alignment within teams, work-life balance, and the changing PM landscape | Nikita Miller
Fournier: Engineering managers cannot code their way out of delivery problems
“New managers tend to default to writing code to solve their problems. So new managers who used to be ICs, they look at a team, and they look at a team that's struggling, and the thing that they want to do is be like, I can just take some of these tickets, I ca…”
Camille Fournier Jul 17, 2019 ▶ 15:28 Camille Fournier on Managing Technical Teams · Y Combinator
Fournier: Managers who only play 'management telephone' add very little value
“If you, if all you're doing is playing management telephone, your manager is adding very little value to the team. And so that's why, like, I think management is not just about people management because people management is just not all of the job.”
Camille Fournier Jul 17, 2019 ▶ 41:15 Camille Fournier on Managing Technical Teams · Y Combinator

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