Ryan Murphy spent five years as an engineering manager at Yelp on the team that owned the infrastructure behind every dollar moving through the company.
He got the job the way a lot of people do, which is that his boss had no budget for a real engineering manager and asked if he'd try it.
Most of this conversation is about the move from engineer to manager: what the job actually is, what he looks for before he'll move someone into it, and why he calls it a career change instead of a promotion. That last part is something I got told when I made the jump and completely ignored. I thought I was getting a bigger version of my old job.
He also runs EM Accelerator, a training program for engineering managers, and Crying on the Sofa, a set of free mental health events for people in tech. He talks about the night that started the second one, sitting on his couch holding his newborn son.
What we covered:
The engineering manager archetypes, and how to spot which one a company is really hiring for
What he watches during a production incident before he'll consider promoting you
Why the strongest engineer on the team is often the wrong pick
Why management is a career change, not a promotion
Why there's so little real training for new managers, and what he teaches instead of one-on-one templates
Whether a manager has to be regulated themselves to lead well
Why he started Crying on the Sofa
Who should not become an engineering manager
His take on AI flattening orgs, and why he thinks people-focused managers matter more, not less
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