How do I keep my technical skills sharp while in management?
Stepping into management shifts your daily work from hands-on engineering to strategy and meetings, making you lose the technical credibility you once relied on. This disconnect leaves you feeling estranged from engineers and anxious that you will be unable to return to an architecture or technical track if you change your mind.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1building a homelab to keep developing networking and technical skills outside of workDid this help you?
- 2remaining actively involved in doing technical work to ensure a smooth transitionDid this help you?
- 3getting hands dirty helping with technical tasks as they pop up when the team needs extra handsDid this help you?
- 4Using past technical knowledge selectively in management meetings to protect the teamDid this help you?
- 5Delegating technical details to team members and acting as a coach rather than an operatorDid this help you?
- 6Finding a middle ground to act as a bridge between technical staff and senior managementDid this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“However, my main concern is career optionality. I’m interested in management, but I don’t want to lose my technical skills and eventually find myself unable to return to architecture or engineering if I change my mind.”source ↗
“Is 1–3 years away from hands-on engineering a problem?”source ↗
“Have you successfully moved back into technical roles after becoming a manager?”source ↗
“What did you do to maintain your technical credibility?”source ↗
“I worry I am and will be becoming less techy (which has felt like a super power for me in my career). I am embracing strategy and also measuring capability performance / what our SLA requires us to do and working on key processes. In other words the management / leadership parts of the job. I am mourning though the “giving up” of the tech part of the job.”source ↗
“while in tech meetings I am starting to feel shunned.”source ↗
“the things I am now working on are not respected by the tech people (and that bothers me). Perception of management is that they don’t listen , pen pushers , just in meetings - the gulf between the 2 sides is just enormous”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 3How to advance a technical career without going into management
- 14How to transition from technical work to management with no background
- 8How do you transition out of a generalist IT management role?
- 5How do I deal with non-technical managers and constant interruptions?
- 13How to handle HR and finance without any specialist support
- 2Why is my entire day eaten up by meetings and micromanagement?