Course curriculum
Stage 1
Pre-Foundations
- 1120 min
The IC-to-Manager Decision
- 2120 min
The Engineering Manager Landscape
- 3
An end-to-end curriculum for engineers stepping into management and managers leveling up to director. Builds the people, delivery, strategy, and technical-credibility loops senior EM and director interviewers grade against — using named frameworks (RACI, DACI, DORA, Team Topologies) and the canonical engineering-leadership canon (Camille Fournier's *The Manager's Path*, Will Larson's *An Elegant Puzzle* + *Staff Engineer*, Andy Grove's *High Output Management*, Lara Hogan's *Resilient Management*). Every module ends with a 60-second interview-ready answer grounded in a real management scenario, not a memorized definition.
The IC-to-Manager Decision
The Engineering Manager Landscape
Your First 30 Days as a Manager
Mastering 1:1 Meetings
Giving and Receiving Feedback
Performance Reviews and Growth
Conflict Resolution for Managers
Hiring and Interviewing Excellence
Team Building and Culture
Technical Decision-Making for Managers
Project Execution and Delivery
Stakeholder and Upward Management
Organizational Design and Team Structure
Engineering Processes at Scale
Managing Managers (Skip-Level Leadership)
Compensation, Leveling & Promotions
Headcount Planning & Hiring Strategy
On-Call, Reliability & Operational Health
Engineering Strategy and Vision
DORA, SPACE, and DX Productivity Metrics
AI-Augmented Engineering Team Management: Adoption, Productivity, Ethics
AI Productivity Counter-Metric System: Resisting Goodhart in the Copilot Era
EM Coding and Code-Review Round: 2026 Format
EM Hypothetical Scenario Drills: Structured Judgment Under Pressure
Narrow-Deep System Design for EMs: 2026 Format
Performance Calibration Committees and Talent Reviews
Mentoring Principal+ Engineers: The Staff Track for People Managers
Multi-Quarter Modernization Migrations: Legacy to Modern
Internal Developer Platforms and Platform Engineering Teams
EM to Director: Managing Managers, Multi-Team Strategy, 50+ Org
Engineering Culture at Scale
Post-RIF Recovery: Rebuilding Trust After Layoffs
Cross-Functional Executive Leadership
Leading Remote & Distributed Engineering Teams