Be a force multiplier for your team.
Concrete skills for engineering managers — managing your energy, your role, your boundaries — so you can scale your impact and still be a person outside of work.
N° 02 / EM
Navigating new terrain is challenging when you don't have the right tools. Illustrations by Joe Groove.
Nobody teaches you how to be an engineering manager. The training options are a conference once a year, a generic leadership program, or expensive 1:1 coaching. Meanwhile the role got harder: fewer resources, higher expectations, and a public conversation questioning whether it should exist at all.
You're buried in tactical work and not sure if you're asking the right questions. Maybe you end the day completely depleted, or with your mind racing and unable to switch off. You're trying to be the manager for your team that you never had — but how can you give to others what you've never gotten for yourself?
There are concrete skills you can learn to change this.
How to manage your energy, not just your time. How to give feedback that leads to change. How to provide direction for your team. This course is built around being a force multiplier for your team.
When headcount was a vanity metric, managers had value simply as an abstraction layer over a number of people. That era ended. Whether you're navigating the IC-to-manager shift or struggling with the higher expectations of the post-ZIRP world, the skills that matter now are the ones nobody taught you.
A mix of introspection, practical exercises that apply to your team and situation, and support — with just the right amount of accountability.
Everyone tells you to "put your own life vest on first" — but how do you actually do that? Learn to distinguish time problems from energy problems, identify baseline vs optional load, and make deliberate tradeoffs so you can do the right things sustainably, not just more things.
Reframe feedback from something threatening to something useful: your work, reflected back to you. Learn how to deliver feedback that leads to change, mine for implicit feedback as a manager, and make your 1:1s the foundation for development conversations.
Learn how to provide direction for your team. Understand what good strategy looks like (hint: it's often simple and obvious), how to carve out thinking time, and how to close the gap between where your team is and where they need to be.
Move from surviving to thriving as a leader. Learn to recognize your default patterns and failure modes, understand which leadership styles work in different situations, and develop the range to lead from choice instead of reflex.
Want to see what the course feels like? Preview the Getting Started module for free.
Preview Intro ModuleSelf-paced and asynchronous, but never alone — a cohort, a pace, and personal feedback on everything you turn in.
Self-paced, asynchronous content delivered over 8 weeks.
Designed to fit into a busy management schedule while still creating space for reflection.
Conversations and reflections from Cate and Jean you can listen to anytime.
Module content and frameworks to deepen your understanding.
Reflection prompts and exercises to apply what you learn to your actual team.
Submit your exercises and get written feedback and coaching from Cate and Jean on every submission.
Author · Fractional CTO · Coach
Author of The Engineering Leader, fractional CTO at Twill, and engineering leadership coach. Previously in leadership roles at DuckDuckGo and Automattic, and an advisor at Glowforge. She has been all over the world, but now lives in Ireland.
More about Cate at cate.blog →
Builder · Coach · Fractional VPE
Builder, writer, coach, and fractional engineering leader at early-stage startups. Previously in leadership roles at Pulse, Medium, and Range, and built out a leadership development company focused on engineers. She lives in Berkeley with her partner and three kids.
More about Jean at jeanhsu.com →Cate and Jean have been coaching engineers and engineering managers for years. This course distills their best frameworks into structured exercises you can apply to your own team — with personal feedback on every submission.
Practical management skills for the post-ZIRP era. One-time payment, eight weeks, and Cate & Jean reading every submission.
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