Why Engineers Hate Their Managers (And What to Do About It)

You're deep in flow state, finally understanding that complex bug, and your manager appears needing 'just five minutes.' Those five minutes destroy an hour of focus, and your manager doesn't understand why velocity is down. They promise features that are technically impossible, take credit for your work in all-hands meetings, and fill your calendar with meetings to plan other meetings.

Here's what took me a decade to learn after switching from engineering to management: most managers aren't evil, they're drowning. They interrupt because they're being interrupted. They make bad technical decisions because they're pressured to make any decision. They claim credit because that's how they learned to survive the corporate game. They're measured on metrics they can't control, asked to do more with less, and criticized from every direction.

The best engineering managers protect focus time like it's sacred. They batch communications, decline unnecessary meetings, and push back on interruptions. They stay technical enough to understand trade-offs and trust their team's judgment. They give credit lavishly and take blame personally. In public it's 'the team delivered,' in private with their boss it's 'I should have caught that.' They give specific, timely feedback based on work they actually paid attention to, not generic HR templates at annual reviews.

Engineers don't hate managers. They hate bad management. And the best teams aren't the ones where engineers and managers are friends—they're the ones where both sides understand their roles, respect each other's challenges, and work together toward shipping incredible things. Not because they have to, but because they want to.