LeadDev's 2026 Engineering Leadership Report surveyed 600 engineering leaders, and the numbers describe a role under strain. One in three managers is considering leaving management to become an individual contributor (IC) again. 45% are working more hours than a year ago. 37% are doing more hands-on technical work than before. 41% say their team is less motivated than it was twelve months ago.
When a third of the people in a job are thinking about leaving it and nearly half are working longer to keep up, I do not think the explanation is that the wrong people got promoted. I think the role is badly designed.
Here is what I mean. An engineering manager is now expected to be the team's coach, its planner, its hiring pipeline, its first responder, its representative to three other departments, and, increasingly, a contributing engineer again, because the team is smaller and the tools make it look possible. Each of those is a real job. Together they are more than one person's week, which is where the extra hours come from.
I do not have a complete answer. I think the start of one is for organizations to say out loud which of those jobs a manager is actually accountable for and which they are not, and to stop quietly adding to the list. The managers who want back into coding are not failing at the role. Many of them are describing it accurately.
If you manage engineers, which part of the job grew the most this year without anyone deciding it should?
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