Engineering management is leverage, not administration

Engineering Managers are not paid to manage calendars, rewrite notes, or chase documents. They are paid to create clarity, enable people, and make decisions.

If your time is spent on repetitive admin, you are under-leveraging your role.

AI changes that.

AI is not optional anymore

AI tools are not experiments, toys, or future bets. They are table stakes.

Used well, AI becomes an extension of your thinking:

• clearer writing
• faster synthesis
• better preparation
• stronger follow-through

It does not replace judgement. It multiplies it.

Refusing to use AI in an EM role is not caution. It is inefficiency.

AI can hold more context than you ever will

Engineering Managers operate in a sea of information:

• months of 1:1 notes and transcripts
• Slack discussions across teams
• meeting outcomes and half-decisions
• performance feedback from multiple sources
• objectives, misses, and course corrections

No human can reliably keep all of this in working memory.

AI can.

Used correctly, AI can ingest and reason over large volumes of qualitative data to:

• prepare end-of-year reviews grounded in actual history, not recency bias
• surface patterns across multiple 1:1s that are invisible week to week
• identify growth themes, repeated blockers, or stalled trajectories
• generate genuinely personalised development plans
• highlight interpersonal dynamics emerging across meetings or teams

This is not automation. This is augmented perception.

AI as a counsellor, not an oracle

There will always be situations where you do not yet know what to do:

• tension between two people
• feedback that feels true but hard to phrase
• a conflict with no obvious “right” move
• a decision with human consequences you cannot fully model

AI can help you think.

By reframing the situation. By offering alternative interpretations. By suggesting questions, not answers. By helping you reason through trade-offs before you speak.

It is not there to decide for you. It is there to help you decide better.

Use AI to remove friction, not accountability

AI can help you:

• summarise 1:1s and extract actions
• prepare difficult conversations with clarity and empathy
• synthesise feedback across time and sources
• structure performance reviews and objectives
• turn scattered discussions into decision logs
• prepare alignment updates in minutes instead of hours

What it cannot do:

• understand trust
• read the room
• choose the right moment
• own the consequences

AI supports your judgement. It does not absolve it.

Spend less time managing process, more time managing people

Your highest-leverage work is not documentation. It is conversations.

Coaching. Context setting. Decision making. Unblocking. Aligning individuals with strategy.

AI should compress the mechanical parts of the job so you can invest more in the human ones.

If AI saves you time, you do not fill it with more admin. You reinvest it in people.

Preparation beats improvisation

Great managers rarely “wing it”.

They show up prepared:

• with context
• with questions
• with intent

AI is a force multiplier for preparation. Drafts, summaries, prompts, scenarios, alternatives.

You still decide. But you decide better.

The standard is higher now

Using AI to manage less is missing the point. The best Engineering Managers use AI to manage more intentionally.

More clarity. More consistency. More fairness. More follow-through.

AI does not lower the bar. It raises it.

The mindset

• Delegate repetition to machines
• Keep judgement with humans
• Use AI to think better, not to think less
• Optimise for leverage, not comfort

Engineering management is a craft. AI does not replace the craft.

It removes the excuses for not practising it well.