Your engineering manager needs information from you to do their job. Here’s how to keep them informed, advocate for your team, and influence decisions without authority.

Josh Hornby

Tech leads must proactively share information with their engineering managers to enable good decisions. Effective managing up means providing regular updates on risks, blockers, team health, and progress with specific details rather than vague statements. When advocating for team needs, connect requests to business outcomes and provide options rather than just problems. Build influence through credibility and make decisions easy by doing upfront work. Common mistakes include assuming managers know about issues, waiting too long to share bad news, and only communicating when needing something.

Managing Up