How Technical Should an Engineering Manager Be?

Engineering Leadership

SubscribeSign in

How Technical Should an Engineering Manager Be?<br>Is being a highly technical engineering manager the best way to go these days? I am answering this question in this article.

Gregor Ojstersek<br>Jul 13, 2026

41

13

Share

This week’s newsletter is sponsored by Blitzy.<br>Blitzy is an autonomous software development platform built for enterprise-scale codebases. With deep understanding of your codebase and design standards, it helps teams ship up to 5× faster → from Figma designs to production code.

Some of its core capabilities include:<br>Self-improving knowledge graph that understands millions of lines of code and their dependencies.

Figma integration that turns designs into responsive frontend code connected to your backend.

Agent orchestration with 3,000+ specialized agents that plan, build, and validate production-ready code.

The result? Up to 80% of the work delivered autonomously . If you're working on a large enterprise codebase, Blitzy is definitely worth checking out.<br>Sign up for free and start building<br>Thanks to Blitzy for sponsoring this newsletter. Let’s get back to this week’s thought!

Intro

There’s a lot of debate these days regarding what the work of engineering managers should look like. The overall sentiment is pointing a lot more towards being technical, and the trend is pointing in this direction as well.<br>Especially since the lines between Architect, Staff Engineer, and Engineering Manager are becoming increasingly blurred, and it’s often expected that one person can wear all three hats when needed.<br>But do I believe that you need to be technical as an EM in all situations? Not at all. I am sharing my reasoning in this article.<br>Let’s start!<br>As an engineering manager, your goal is to do what’s best for the team and organization

This is a very important point to always keep in mind as an engineering manager.<br>Your overall performance is judged by the success of your team, the impact you have on others, and the whole organization, not your individual contribution.

So, that automatically puts you in a position to be an enabler for others → helping everyone do their best work possible, and ensuring that the team is going to be successful.

I always viewed a lot of the EM work as “filling the gaps of the team”. Specific examples:<br>If the team lacks good communication and cross-functional collaboration, the EM should be doing a lot of that.

If the team is lacking technical seniority, the EM should be filling the gap

If the team needs help contributing with tasks, the EM should be doing that

If the team needs help with setting clear priorities and boundaries, that’s what the EM should be focusing on, etc.

These are some of the examples. And then there are 2 options you have. Either fill the gaps yourself as an EM or hire someone that would fill them.<br>Now that we understand the overall focus of an EM role, let’s go through the difference between the people manager and technical manager.<br>People manager vs technical manager

You can’t be the best at both. There is a limited amount of time every day, and it all depends on how you spend it.<br>People manager

As a people manager, you spend more time growing your team, unblocking them, communicating with stakeholders, aligning with the leadership team, and ensuring your team has everything they need to be successful.<br>Technical manager

As a technical manager, you spend more time reviewing architecture docs and tech specs, as well as reviewing code, while contributing to the codebase as well. You’re also a lot more involved in overall discussions when it comes to making technical decisions.<br>Over the course of my career, I’ve seen both types work well. I’ve personally been a mix of them, and for some situations I’ve been the first one, especially when I grew to Head of Engineering, VP, and CTO.<br>And I’ve been the second one as a Team Lead and Engineering Manager. But as an EM, I’ve also changed over time to being more like a people manager, as the teams I led grew to be more autonomous.<br>So, both types can work well, but it’s important to understand that being best at both is not possible. If you spend more time on technical direction and contributing to the codebase, you’ll spend less time communicating, unblocking, and growing your people.<br>Now that we understand the differences, let me share my recommendation.<br>Should you be a people manager or a technical manager?

There’s a time and place where both are very much needed. Especially at this time, when the work is being accelerated with AI, the people work might be worth even more, because you can unblock your team to move faster that way.<br>The problem these days is that a lot of companies might not understand how important people work is, and are forcing a lot of managers to be more hands-on.<br>The problem with this approach is that it’s not what every team needs. Every team is different, and if the team is already...