In 2020, following a quick phone call about a successful POC, I walked into standup believing I was the team’s new Tech Lead. Instead, I discovered I had unknowingly accepted a role managing the 8 engineers I had just been bantering with an hour earlier.

Strong technical execution is the very thing that gets engineers promoted, yet it does nothing to equip them to manage direct reports, handle conflict, or navigate complex stakeholder relationships. This talk skips the abstract management theory to look directly at the structural skills gap created when engineers become managers. I will walk through what changes when you make this leap.