What are the qualities of a good engineer manager?

Engineering managers with strong technical skills tend to earn more respect from their teams than managers with strong people skills that do not fully understand the work.

To be a quality engineer manager, you'll need to maintain an up-to-date knowledge of the engineering processes and software technologies (coding languages, frameworks, methodologies, etc.) your team uses to know which solution will work best for each situation and to understand and review the work you are managing.

Besides supervising the engineering team's work, engineering managers need to be able to oversee a project from start to finish. This includes allocating and budgeting resources, coordinating communication across multiple departments, and meeting important deadlines.

To accomplish this, engineering managers need to be able to communicate effectively with their own team and clients, executives, and members of other departments who may have a less technical background.

In a manager role, an engineer must learn how to assess situations that don't have clear right or wrong answers (e.g., where to make budget cuts, when to extend deadlines) is a key skill that effective team leaders need to acquire. Another aspect of working in a managerial position is learning how to delegate tasks.

Sometimes a task may be quicker if you complete it; however, learning to delegate responsibilities to other team members is an important part of being a manager.