The Invisible Manager
Here's a counterintuitive idea: the most successful development managers are invisible.
Not absent. Not disengaged. Invisible. The organisation barely notices them because everything just... works. The team ships. People grow. Problems get solved without escalation. The manager's fingerprints are nowhere to be found.
That's the goal.
The Promotion Trap
It happens all the time. A brilliant engineer gets promoted to management because they were brilliant at engineering. Then they struggle, because the skills that made them excellent at building software have almost nothing to do with the skills required to lead people who build software.
Technical excellence doesn't automatically translate to managerial capability. They're different jobs.
Your job as a manager is not to be the best engineer in the room. It's to make sure everyone in your team makes their own impact within the business.
If the team's success depends on you being the smartest person, you've failed. If the team's success depends on you being invisible, you've won.
How to Disappear
Hire Good People
This is the hardest part and the most important. Get this right and everything else becomes easier. Get this wrong and no amount of process or heroics will save you.
Hire people who tackle problems independently. People you trust to make good decisions without checking with you first. People who make you feel slightly redundant.
You should never have anyone in your team that you don't trust. If you don't trust them, either you hired wrong or you're managing wrong. Figure out which and fix it.
Push Back
When someone comes to you with a question, resist the urge to answer it directly. Instead, ask them what they think. Redirect the problem back to them.
This feels slower. It is slower, in the moment. But it builds a team that can solve problems without you—which is the entire point.
Every time you solve a problem for someone, you've taught them to bring you problems. Every time you help them solve it themselves, you've taught them to solve problems.
Build Around Motivation
Pay attention to what energises people. Some engineers love greenfield projects. Others prefer optimising existing systems. Some want customer contact. Others want to disappear into deep technical work.
Match people to work that motivates them. A passionate engineer working on something they care about will outperform a disengaged engineer every time, regardless of raw ability.
Create Structure, Then Step Back
Set up the systems—the rituals, the processes, the communication channels—that let the team operate autonomously. Then get out of the way.
Your job is to build the machine, not to be the machine.
The Visibility Trap
Some managers measure their worth by how busy they look. How many meetings they're in. How many decisions flow through them. How indispensable they seem.
This is backwards.
If everything requires your involvement, you've created a bottleneck, not a team. If you're the hero saving every project at the last minute, you've failed to build systems that prevent fires in the first place.
The manager who looks busiest is often the one whose team is struggling most. Visible heroics usually mean invisible failures.
The Goal
The goal is to build a team that succeeds without you. To make yourself unnecessary for day-to-day operations. To be invisible.
This doesn't mean you're not working. It means your work is upstream: hiring, coaching, removing obstacles, setting direction, building culture. The stuff that doesn't show up in status reports but determines whether the team thrives or struggles.
When the team ships something great, they should get the credit. When something goes wrong, you should take the blame. That's the deal.
Disappear into the success of your team. That's what good management looks like.
The best managers are invisible. Not absent—invisible. The team succeeds without heroics because the manager hired well, pushed problems back to build self-sufficiency, matched people to motivating work, and built systems that run without constant intervention. If everything requires your involvement, you've created a bottleneck. The goal is to disappear into your team's success.