How do you personally define and measure success in your role as an engineering manager?

Question

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

I define success as an engineering manager across three key dimensions:
A. Impact on the Business and Customers:
Success to me starts with delivering tangible results—projects shipped on time,
within budget, and with high quality. I measure this by the value delivered to
customers and the strategic impact on the company’s goals. Whether it's
increasing system reliability, improving user experience, or enabling new
revenue streams, the outcomes must matter.
B. Growth and Empowerment of the Team:
I see my team’s growth as a direct reflection of my leadership. Success here
means seeing team members thrive—whether that’s deepening their technical
expertise, taking on greater ownership, or progressing into leadership roles. I
track this through regular career conversations, skills development, and
internal promotions or expanded responsibilities.
C. Enduring Relationships and Culture:
Finally, I value the relationships I build—ones that extend beyond the company.
Fostering trust, collaboration, and a positive culture where people feel
supported is core to my leadership. If former team members still reach out for
advice or to work together again, that’s a strong signal that I’ve made a
lasting impact.
By consistently reflecting on these dimensions and using both qualitative and
quantitative metrics, I evaluate my effectiveness not just as a manager, but as
a leader who builds meaningful, high-performing teams.

Anonymous · Answer

As a manager, there are a few things I am looking at the measure my progress and
improvement.
The first thing I look at is having clear measurable success metrics for the
team that aligns with the org and company and working towards meeting that goal.
My current team is responsible for delivering mission-critical messages to our
end users. We have various metrics tracking the reliability of our backend
systems and the deliverability of our messages. To make sure we are tracking our
success metrics, we do a monthly review of our core metrics and have in-person
discussions if there are any potential problems or a way to improve our metrics.
The other thing I look at is people management. There are two main areas here.
One is growing people and the other is doing performance management. For
performance management, I have continuous conversations around performance and
expectations utilizing my 1-1 time with my reports so there is no surprise when
there is a performance issue. When I had someone who was marked as below
expectation, the person agreed with the ratings because we had continuous
conversations. While the IC was improving and got back on track, the annual
performance review looked at the past year and the IC wasn’t surprised by the
rating. For growing people, I also utilize 1-1 time and discuss individuals'
short-term and long-term goals. I discuss with my reports where are growth
areas, and how we can find opportunities to help them grow. For example, I had a
mid-level engineer who was interested in improving their technical leadership
skill and getting more involved in defining and scoping projects phase. I
started inviting the IC to meetings with stakeholders and had a quick sync after
such meetings to discuss the meeting and describe why I answered some questions
in a certain way. The IC is now one of the senior engineers in the team and he
is effectively leading projects involving multiple teams.
To receive feedback and be aware of what I am doing well or need to improve on,
I do two things. I have my reports meet with my manager once a quarter where
they can provide feedback to my manager without me being present, and later my
lead will relay the feed to me with his input as well. The other thing is my
current company does pulse surveys twice a year. When the survey results are
out, I have my team get together and discuss the results and provide more
context without me being present. I review the final outcome and create action
items as needed. For example, one of the feedback I got was improving the
overall recognition of our work. I started announcing our project deliveries and
impact to the broader group.

Anonymous · Answer

The way I would define and measure success of my engineering manager journey is
through the following. A, the impact for both the customers and the company. How
did I make an impact? It should be in the form of the projects executed on time
and delivered within budget. B, how did I enable and empower my team members to
grow in their career? Either through acquiring more knowledge or through them
becoming a people manager, etc. C, what kind of relationship I built which lasts
more than the company's lifetime. By defining all this and measuring metrics on
all this, that is how I would define whether I was successful or not successful
as a Manager.

Anonymous · Answer

As a EM, I have three buckets to measure against - Impact I made to my company
and my team, how did I grow my team mates and realationship I built with people
I worked with. With regards to team mates How many could I grow as a person and
as leader, and how did I acceralte their growth
Impact - is about Execution and what company growth. At Auctane, I measured
against three bucktes and rated each one. That is how I defined success aa EM.

Anonymous · Answer

When the team is happy with what they are doing, engaged, helping  each other's
success and collaborative.I can assess the team engagement in 1:1’s and try to
allocate the work based on their aspiration and skills.  When the team is on the
same page and well informed about our roadmap, goals etc by having regular team
sync’s. And deliver the goals with minimum deviations

Anonymous · Answer

When team is happy with what they are doing, engaged, helping  each other's
success and collaborative. When team is on same page and well informed our
roadmap, goals etc. And deliver the goals with minimum deviations .

Anonymous · Answer

Success for me is 1) goals delivered on time and in quality with  reasonable
operational load 2) satisfied employees who feel challenged, enjoy their work
and safe

Anonymous · Answer

At Auctane I would do the following:
a) How did i execute on projects and measure on Impact to customes and business
b) How did i empower my team mates to grow in thier carrer - either by help them
get promoted or switch roles
c) How did I grow personally?
By measuring these and continuly coarse correcting to be a better manager is how
i reflect as a EM

How do you personally define and measure success in your role as an engineering manager?

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