How to Lead Your Team when the House Is on Fire

The article frames the current tech climate as a wartime period for Engineering Managers, marked by funding pressure, AI disruption, low morale, uncertainty, and fast-changing goals. It says the core EM responsibilities stay the same, but the way they are carried out has to shift toward speed, focus, and resilience.

Reading notes

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• Wartime leadership means pushing the team to ship what matters most now, with ruthless prioritization and clear, repeated context.
• Managers should remove blockers, reduce approval layers, and bias toward action so the team can make fast decisions.
• Protecting focus time matters, so the team should be shielded from interruptions, low-value meetings, and administrative work.
• A hands-on manager can help in technical work when needed, such as code reviews, pair programming, incident response, or small commits.
• Faster execution will likely increase tech debt, so the article recommends tracking it visibly, paying it down in small ways, and addressing concrete pain points rather than overengineering for unknown future problems.
• Morale still needs attention, with quick wins, appreciation, confidence, and open discussion of concerns in one-on-ones and Q&As.
• The article warns against an “us vs. them” mindset and says difficult decisions should be explained as far as possible, with honesty about what is still unknown.
• Hiring continues in wartime, but the focus should be on experienced, autonomous engineers who can contribute quickly.
• Performance issues should be handled with direct feedback, clear expectations, and the same standards for everyone, even when the context is stressful.
• Individual growth should be reframed around impact, transferable experience, and on-the-job learning opportunities in high-stakes work.
• The manager also needs to protect their own health by keeping up basic self-care, seeking peer support, taking short breaks, and maintaining perspective.