(Other than people management specific tasks like performance management, everything in this doc applies to team and project leads too.)

At Sourcegraph, there’s always more work than time… and it feels like everything needed to be done yesterday. Impactful managers empower engineers to take ownership, prioritize effectively, and deliver real value. Ineffective managers either micromanage or disappear, leaving teams unfocused or overwhelmed.

Every company has its own needs, and impactful managers at Sourcegraph won’t always look like impactful managers at other companies. In some environments, managers should effectively execute the plan, focus on their defined roles, assign specific tasks, or adhere to established processes. At Sourcegraph, we need managers who define the plan, are flexible, generate high trust and agency, and  are hands-on problem solvers. Time moves faster here—what might take weeks or months at other companies, we condense into days or weeks.

Ineffective managers: fixers, phantoms, and friends

Ineffective managers fall into three categories: fixers, phantoms, or friends.

• The fixer jumps in at every issue, giving step-by-step instructions and solving problems themselves. This undermines autonomy, leaves engineers dependent, and stifles creativity. Fixers struggle to delegate and fail to develop their team's skills, ultimately slowing the team down.
• The phantom assumes autonomy means hands-off management, offering little guidance. They avoid involvement, leaving the team without direction or support. This often leads to misalignment, wasted effort, and poor outcomes due to a lack of oversight and structure.
• The friend coddles their team, fails to deliver results, and cannot effectively challenge ideas. They rely on secondhand information and avoid getting into the code when needed, which causes drag and divides the team from the company.

All three approaches hinder high agency: fixers smother it, phantoms let it run without guidance, and friends decouple it from meaningful results.

The impactful manager: coaches and catalysts

Impactful managers act as coaches, creating the conditions for engineers to solve problems independently. They provide direction without taking over, guiding teams toward goals while trusting them to execute. They are also catalysts who ensure impact and accountability by setting clear expectations, monitoring progress, and doing their part to keep projects on track. They balance empowerment with hands-on involvement to ensure that delivery standards and deadlines are consistently met.

1. Deliver business needs

Impactful managers ensure engineering delivers outcomes that benefit the business. They make sure developers don't just understand customer needs—they feel them. This enables devs to iterate quickly toward high quality solutions through internalized feedback loops.

Impactful managers understand that engineering doesn’t exist in a bubble. They ensure cross-team and cross-functional alignment, collaborating closely with Product, Design, TPM, Technical Success, and Marketing. When cross-functional partners are unavailable, impactful managers advocate for those perspectives, making decisions that reflect the business as a whole. This helps ensure that engineering efforts are always aligned with larger priorities.

One of the biggest challenges we face is balancing customer-specific work with work that benefits the broader user base. Customer requests can be urgent and critical for business success, but the long-term health of the product depends on improvements that serve a wider audience. Impactful managers work with stakeholders to find this balance, pushing back if customer requests are impeding their ability to progress on other work.

Techniques for this:

• Encourage internalized feedback loops by ensuring developers use our products in their work and directly watch/read/gather customer feedback.
• Cross-functional meetings to ensure alignment with stakeholders.
• Clear prioritization to weigh customer-specific work against broader product goals.
• Acting as an advocate for stakeholders, ensuring decisions reflect the full company perspective.