You're Only Visible When Something Breaks
I spent three weeks in Japan last year. Three weeks completely offline, no Slack, no email, no "quick check-ins."
Before I left, I was nervous as hell. Would my team be okay? Would things fall apart?
I spent two weeks preparing. I created a Confluence page for each person detailing exactly what they should work on. I dove deep into the backlog, lined up their next tasks, made sure they had all the context they needed to start. I even went overboard and documented backlog bugs they could tackle if they somehow got stuck on the main projects.
You know what happened?
They crushed it. All three big projects done, on time, without me. I came back to a team that had performed beautifully.
I was proud. Really proud.
And then a few months later, I had a family emergency. Three days. That's it. No time to prepare, no Confluence pages, no carefully laid out tasks.
Those three days? The team hit an obstacle in the sprint work. They needed a decision. Nobody could make it. They were stuck, almost like a ship without a captain, just drifting.
Questions piled up. Work stalled. My own manager had to step in.
The Weird Math of Engineering Management
Here's the thing that messes with my head: Three weeks away with preparation proved I was doing my job right. Three days away without preparation proved I was actually needed.
Both situations showed the same thing from different angles. But only one of them felt like proof.
When you're an engineer, your value is obvious. You write code. Tests pass. Features ship. Pull requests get merged. There's a clear line from "I did this thing" to "this thing exists now."
As an EM? Your best work is invisible.
When the team is humming along, when people know what to work on, when decisions get made smoothly, when conflicts get resolved before they blow up - that's you doing your job. But nobody sees it. It just feels like... things are working.
You're only visible when something breaks.
The Engineer's Perspective (That I Used to Have)
Talk to any engineer and they'll start going off about managers. We've all heard it. Hell, I used to say it.
"Managers are all the same. Micromanagers. Too many meetings. Always asking me for updates. What do they even do all day?"
Maybe you were on this page too before you became an EM.
I get it. From the outside, it looks like managers just... show up to meetings? Ask questions? Create more process?
The work isn't tangible. There's no code to review. No tests that prove you did it right.
The Reality Nobody Talks About
Turning into a manager shows you the other side. And it's actually hard.
You don't want to be hated. You're just trying to do your job the best you can.
The hard truth is that your key deliverables are no longer code and features. Your job is the enabling environment—the structure, the clarity, and the growth—that allows your team to perform. And there's no test suite for that.
When something feels off with the team, you're sitting there thinking: "Shit, how do I fix this now? Am I even doing the right thing?"
We don't have tutorials. We don't have guides. We don't have README files (more on that in a future post). It's all trial and error.
For the longest time, I thought I was just bad at being an EM. Like maybe I wasn't cut out for this.
Then I started talking to other engineering managers. And they were all struggling with the same things.
That was weirdly satisfying. It gave me a huge boost.
I wasn't doing things wrong. The job is just genuinely hard, and the perception of managers across the development field isn't great.
What Other EMs Are Actually Grappling With
When I started talking to fellow EMs, I realized we're all dealing with the same core issue: nobody recognizes what we make easier for them.
Engineers don't see the decisions we're making, the context we're carrying, the fires we're putting out before they even start. It makes you feel like you're not actually doing anything.
And here's the thing - most of us come from engineering backgrounds. We got into EM by chance, or because we were decent at the technical stuff and someone thought "hey, you should try management."
We used to be measurably productive. Ship features. Close tickets. Merge PRs. Now? What's our output?
I still feel this way sometimes. You're not coding as much. Maybe not at all. It feels bad. What are they even paying me for?
But you are doing a lot. It's just invisible.
The Imposter Syndrome Never Really Goes Away
I still get imposter syndrome. Because there are no clear markers that say "you're doing it right."
The best I can do is look at it from this perspective: Is my team performing? If yes, I'm probably doing something right.
That Japan trip? That was validation. I set them up to succeed, and they did. The preparation I put in - the Confluence pages, the backlog grooming, the context-setting - that was the work. They just didn't see it because it worked.
The three-day emergency? That was the opposite. No prep time meant all that invisible work suddenly became visible through its absence. The decision-making, the context, the direction - all the stuff that usually just happens in the background.
When it's there, nobody notices.
When it's gone, everything stops.
What I'd Tell My Past Engineer-Self
If I could go back and talk to myself when I was complaining about managers, here's what I'd say:
Find your peers. Now. Not eventually. Not when you feel like you've figured things out. Right away. Finding other EMs who were dealing with the same stuff, realizing I wasn't alone - that changed everything. It took so much stress away.
You're the only one who can improve yourself. Try to figure out what kind of manager you are. Write it down. Share it with your team. They need to know how to work with you, just like you need to know how to work with them.
Use your own manager. You probably have a manager yourself. Use your 1:1s with them to question things. Ask them to help you see your blind spots. That's what they're there for.
The invisible work is still work. Just because there's no PR to show for it doesn't mean you're not doing anything.
The Thing About Being an EM
You're like the offensive line in football. When you're doing your job well, nobody notices. The quarterback gets the glory. The running back scores the touchdown.
But when you miss a block? Everyone sees it.
That's the job.
Your team performs well, and it looks like they're just naturally great. (They are great. But you helped make that possible.)
Your team struggles, and everyone wonders what you're doing all day.
The work is real. The impact is real. It's just invisible when it's working.
And maybe that's okay. Maybe that's actually the sign you're doing it right.
The team that crushed it during my Japan trip? That wasn't luck. It was the invisible work paying off. They didn't need me in those three weeks because I had already done my job.
That's the EM challenge: The best job you do is the one nobody ever has to see.
If you're an EM struggling with the lack of tangible proof or the imposter syndrome that comes with it, you're not alone. That's actually the job.
Let's connect on LinkedIn—I'm always down to talk about this stuff with peers who understand the struggle.