The Signs You Promoted the Wrong Person Into Management
A struggling manager rarely announces it — the team does, quietly, months before it hits a dashboard. Here are the signs, and why it's almost never the person's fault.
Marco Poletto
Engineering leadership for scaling teams and organisations — org design, delivery, and the human side of technology. Written by Marco Poletto.
Latest posts
How I Grow an Engineer Into a Manager
Promoting your best engineer into management as a reward is how you lose a great engineer and gain a struggling manager in one move. Here's how I actually grow people into the role — and keep the exit ramp open.
What I Look For When Hiring (and Growing) Engineering Managers
Hiring engineering managers is the highest-leverage decision a leader makes—and the easiest to get wrong. Here are the four signals I look for, and how I grow ICs into managers who actually scale.
Scaling Without Breaking: Field Notes on Doubling a Team and Restructuring an Org
Two of the hardest things an engineering leader does are grow a team fast and restructure one that already exists—without breaking either. Here's what actually worked when I did both.
The Engineering Leader's Reading List
The books I'd actually hand to someone stepping into engineering leadership—grouped by the problem they solve, from the first-time-manager wobble to designing an organisation that scales.
Delivery Operations as a System: Making Delivery Predictable Without Slowing Teams Down
Most orgs try to make delivery predictable by adding process on top of teams. That's backwards. Here's how to treat delivery operations as a system with three surfaces—release, quality, and incidents—that runs across teams without owning them.
Engineering Strategy That Executives Actually Read
Most engineering strategy documents die in a shared drive because they're written in engineering. Here's how to write one your CEO, CFO, and board will read, remember, and fund.
Refactoring the Organization: How to Pay Down Management Debt
Discover how management debt—poorly structured organizations and bloated processes—can cripple engineering velocity, and learn actionable strategies to refactor your department.
Managing Through AI Fatigue: Keeping Dev Teams Grounded in the Age of Automation
AI assistants promised to make developers 10x more productive. Instead, they are driving cognitive overload and burnout. Here is how engineering leaders can navigate AI fatigue.
Leading in the Fog: How to Guide Engineering Teams Through Organizational Uncertainty
A practitioner's guide for engineering managers navigating reorgs, strategic pivots, and layoffs while protecting team focus and morale.
Measuring Velocity Without Killing Morale: A Practical Guide to Team Metrics
How to use engineering metrics without crushing developer agency, burning out your team, or falling into the Goodhart's Law trap.
Designing an Effective Onboarding Plan for New Engineers
A structured, phased onboarding guide to set up new software engineering hires for long-term success, autonomy, and early wins.
When a Deployment Breaks: Leading a Blameless Post-Mortem That People Actually Enjoy
How you handle the first few hours of a production outage determines team trust for months. Here is a practical, working practitioner's guide to running blameless post-mortems.
Engineering Leadership Beyond Delivery: Why Psychological Safety Matters
Explore the importance of psychological safety in engineering leadership for sustainable performance beyond just delivery-focused metrics
Engineering Management in the Netherlands: Should You Stay Technical or Embrace Leadership?
Explore the choice between staying technical or embracing leadership in engineering management within the thriving Dutch tech ecosystem