Leading Without Letting Go: 20 Years as a Working Manager at Small Companies Link to heading
For two decades, I’ve worked as a hands-on engineering manager at small companies. That means juggling code, people, meetings, deadlines—and doing it all without layers of support or fallback. There’s no program manager to shield you. No layers of hierarchy to delegate through. You write code and lead the team, sometimes within the same hour.
It’s not glamorous. But it is powerful. Small teams move fast, and you feel every decision you make almost immediately. There’s very little abstraction between your actions and their impact. That kind of proximity makes you sharper—but also demands a level of intentionality you don’t always need in larger organizations.
Here’s what I’ve learned that might help you do it better—and stay sane while you’re at it.
🧠 Say Goodbye to Heads-Down Coding Link to heading
You can’t lead well if you’re always buried in code. Deep focus becomes a luxury you can’t afford. When you’re a manager, interruptions aren’t a distraction—they’re the job.
So delegate the complex, flow-heavy tasks. Let your team take on the projects that need hours of uninterrupted thought. Focus on work that’s easy to pause and resume—like reviews, prototyping, or debugging edge cases.
Your new metric isn’t how much code you ship—it’s how fast your team can move because you’re not in their way. It’s not about doing less valuable work—it’s about doing high-leverage work that helps everyone else do more.
📆 Your Calendar Is the Job Link to heading
1:1s with every team member. Every week. No exceptions. Even if you have nothing urgent to discuss, the consistency builds trust.
Be interruptible. Be available. In small teams, delays compound fast. If someone is waiting for you, they’re not working. If they’re making progress while you’re in meetings or helping others, you’re doing great.
The hard truth: your time isn’t yours anymore. But the tradeoff is worth it when the team’s velocity stays high. The moment your absence becomes a blocker is the moment your management strategy needs a rethink.
💬 “What Do You Think?” and Commander’s Intent Link to heading
Don’t be the person with all the answers. Be the person who makes space for better ones.
Your most powerful phrase? “What do you think?”
Instead of prescribing solutions, define the intent. What outcome are you aiming for? What constraints matter? That’s the core of Commander’s Intent—giving your team enough context to make good decisions on their own.
When they start owning decisions, you’re leading. When they rely on you less, you’re succeeding. And when they start doing things you wouldn’t have thought of—but that still accomplish the mission—you’re really winning.
📣 Explore, Then Teach Link to heading
Curiosity is gold—but only if it’s shared. Encourage your team to explore new tools, patterns, or ideas within reason. If someone wants to try something, make the space—but require a return on investment.
That means:
- They present what they learned (good or bad)
- It’s structured—not a ramble
- It happens during a team meeting or brown bag lunch
Don’t wait for polish or production-grade insight. Sharing half-baked or failed ideas still benefits the team. What matters is the habit: explore, synthesize, communicate.
Learning is great. Teaching is better. When one person explores and everyone benefits, the team gets sharper. Over time, this habit compounds and becomes a force multiplier for the entire org.
🧠 Spread the Knowledge: Avoid Single Points of Failure Link to heading
In small teams, institutional knowledge can become dangerously concentrated. If only one person knows how something works—whether it’s a piece of code, a deployment script, or a client relationship—you’ve got a problem.
The next time work in that area comes up, assign it to someone else. Yes, it’ll be slower. But it’s always better in the long run. Spread the pain early so you don’t suffer later.
Build a culture where nobody is the “only” one who knows how something works. Make documentation part of the workflow. Rotate responsibilities. Pair people up. Redundancy isn’t a waste—it’s resilience.
This isn’t just about availability or vacations. It’s about protecting your team from burnout, your product from bottlenecks, and your company from risk.
🔁 Lead by Example—Especially When You Mess Up Link to heading
Screwed something up? Say so. Out loud. In front of the team.
Nothing builds trust like accountability. Your team will follow your lead. If you own your mistakes, they’ll own theirs. If you hide them, so will they.
This doesn’t mean performative vulnerability. It means being honest when you miss a deadline, fail to communicate, or realize you made the wrong call. Then fix it—or if you can’t, explain what you’re doing next.
Mistakes are fine. Repeating the same ones, or hiding them, isn’t. You set the cultural ceiling. If you hide your missteps, everyone else will too. Set the tone. Then hold your team to the same standard.
🎯 Help Prioritize—Don’t Do It for Them Link to heading
Your team needs your help making decisions, not by taking the keyboard from them. Step in to:
- Clarify what matters now vs. later
- Cut low-priority work early
- Maintain quality without rewriting everything yourself
It’s easy to fall into the trap of fixing things because it’s faster. But in doing so, you rob your team of the chance to improve. Instead, coach them through it.
When you mentor instead of override, people learn. When you shield instead of solve, the team scales.
🧗 Delegate for Growth, Not Just Relief Link to heading
Delegation isn’t a favor to yourself—it’s an investment in others.
Hand off outcomes, not just tasks. Give someone ownership over a result, not just a to-do list. Stay close enough to support—but far enough to let them stretch.
Be explicit about expectations and give people the space to surprise you. The best moments in working management come when someone solves a hard problem better than you would have.
Done well, this makes you less essential over time. That’s the goal—not because you’re disengaged, but because your team is strong.
✅ Conclusion Link to heading
This post is just an overview. Each of these areas—delegation, trust, feedback, knowledge sharing—deserves its own deep dive, and I plan to explore them in future articles. If one of them resonated or raised a question for you, stay tuned.
Working management is messy. It’s also incredibly high-impact. You won’t do it perfectly—but you don’t have to.
Lead with intent. Be available. Own your mistakes. Raise others up. Protect your team from knowledge silos. Put the mission in front of people and then let them figure out how to carry it.
Because your success isn’t measured by what you ship. It’s measured by what your team achieves because of you.