Your first days as a Manager

To succeed as a manager, you need clarity on where you should be heading and a team that trusts you to take them there. Your first days are critical for absorbing context and establishing trust—they're an opportunity to leverage first impressions and the most free time you'll have before the role responsibilities gradually take over.

Your two main goals for the initial weeks should be to get context and build rapport.

What you need to know

Your Company and the Industry

Start by grasping how your company operates within its industry and how it compares to competitors. The key is identifying how the business actually makes money—outsiders often guess incorrectly.

For example, while mobile games might seem to profit from ads or microtransactions, the reality is that a tiny fraction of players (“whales”) drive the most revenue. Without attracting and retaining these high spenders even popular games can fail. When you join the company, your idea that its objective is “making games that attract players” actually turns out to be “making games that attract whales.”

This reflects how large mobile companies need to operate. While indie studios can survive on modest earnings, larger companies with high payrolls and overhead costs cannot.

How the company makes money will also show what people care about when discussing its projects and how it measures success.

The way you operate will also be determined by whether your company is a leader or a challenger in the industry: Leaders avoid risks to their reputation and have many processes to avoid severe incidents or outages, while challengers prioritize speed and delivering over polish. Knowing where your company stands changes your team's approach to shipping features.

Your Company and Your Squad

Every team exists for a reason. Usually, this boils down to solving a critical problem or pursuing a strategic bet to capture market share. As an Engineering Manager, you need to identify why your squad exists and determine the role it should play.

This also determines if your squad is considered a cost (critical problem) or profit (strategic bet) center. Being the former means your team will always be working with a lower budget because most companies seek to minimize costs. In comparison, the latter is perceived as a lever for company growth.

If you are in a cost center squad, look for ways to leverage your problem domain to generate ideas for becoming more of a profit center squad.

Learning from documentation

Documents are often outdated but are invaluable knowledge. They are key to understanding past decisions and lessons learned and show what has been tried so far and what the alignment is on the future.

• Product Docs: Even with a dedicated Product Manager, you must care about your product since you’re the bridge between vision and execution. Review documents containing future goals, current strategies, and past objectives (OKRs, etc.). They will set the baseline expectations for your team's performance in upcoming quarters.

• Technical Docs: Look at the team’s recent tickets to assess how deliverables were handled over the last three months, how they are delivering, and who is delivering. Finally, check the codebase—but avoid jumping into coding, a common new-manager trap. You should first get familiar with the core manager's responsibilities.

One good onboarding tip is to create the next onboarding while you are onboarding: Document your learnings and make a short note or presentation as if the next team member would start right after. Not only is this useful for remembering in the following days, but helps your memory by writing things down. This is immensely helpful when you start hiring people.

Learning while building rapport

Conversations will provide more current and candid insights than documentation. While there’s no “wrong” person to talk to initially, prioritize those you’ll interact with most frequently: squadmates (engineers, designers, PMs), your manager, and other Engineering Managers in your group.

Meeting with Your Manager

Schedule a meeting with your manager on your first day— don't wait for them to reach you. Just ping them as soon as you are ready to start. Discuss role expectations and request the documentation as shown above. Be transparent about your strengths and areas for growth; their support will shape your success.

Follow up with recurring 1:1s, starting every other day and transitioning to a weekly cadence as responsibilities shift. Prioritize asynchronous updates since you’ll interact far more with your squad than your director.

In these first meetings with your manager, share what you learned, and confirm any hypotheses that you have. Your objective is to align with them to gradually take ownership of responsibilities.

1:1s with teammates

Schedule 1:1s with colleagues you meet in recurring team meetings. Focus on understanding their roles, motivations, and challenges.

When scheduling meetings, respect “maker's time”—developers resent midday interruptions, while managers are accustomed to meetings. Therefore, aim to cluster 1:1 meetings with scheduled team ceremonies to minimize disruptions.

Frame questions around their experience: Are they more communicator or task-focused? Ask what excites them most about the project, what challenges they’re currently facing, and what they’d change with a “magic wand” (this surfaces common pain points).

Avoid having scripted conversations. Listen actively, let discussions flow naturally, and don’t shy away from small talk—it builds rapport.

Approach it like a normal conversation: asking open-ended questions (e.g., “What’s top of mind for you this week?”), practice active listening. For 1:1s with Individual Contributors (ICs), let them drive where the conversation should go.

After the meeting, set a follow-up cadence (weekly/monthly) based on their proximity to your role. I start weekly with my reports/director and every two weeks for everyone else. Then, adjust the cadence based on the value of the conversations in the following meetings.

Group Meetings

Ask “silly” questions freely—your fresh perspective often reveals overlooked issues.

Observe discussions actively. Share insights from past experiences when relevant, and defer decisions until you’re confident.

If pressed to decide prematurely (e.g., by a PM accustomed to your predecessor’s taking decisions), ask clarifying questions to come up with solutions as a team.

Keep things moving as they are during your first few days, and avoid rushing into changing course before you feel confident. Some managers make the mistake of trying to shape the new company in the image of their previous workplace without having much context.

Take the time to learn and adopt the positive aspects of the new culture. Some companies have a more reserved, straight-to-business approach with minimal small talk, while others are more vocal and operate like a passionate, outspoken pirate crew. Embrace what you have.

Getting out of the onboarding

Onboarding officially ends when your director has transferred every responsibility they managed while covering your role. This will happen gradually, so be proactive in removing the "training wheels" progressively. And once you’re running your squad, you’re not alone—continue to rely on your team to make decisions together.

The skills and knowledge you’ve acquired so far will be invaluable in shaping your team’s future. We're just beginning!