The Engineering Manager Archetypes 📊
A thorough framework to identify how engineering managers create value inside orgs.
Hey, Luca here! Today’s article is from Thiago Ghisi, a dear friend and one of the most thoughtful engineering writers I know.
Over the past two months he created an incredible framework for identifying how engineering managers operate and create value inside organizations, backed by a ton of research + tens of real-world stories he witnessed and collected first-hand.
I am thrilled and honored that he is publishing it first here on Refactoring.
Long before we had words like red or blue, people used quick analogies—“like blood,” or “like the sky”—to describe what they saw. This was fine at first, but it got limiting. Eventually, we coined color names, and that gave us a shared language for discussing color variations with precision.
Likewise, when it comes to people's behavior and leadership, we often rely on vague imprecise descriptions (“he’s too controlling”, "she’s hands-off", "he is a people's pleaser"). But there’s a better way: archetypes.
Archetypes show up all around us—in myths, symbols, stories, and especially in the roles people naturally step into. We recognize them instinctively: the Hero, the Mentor, the Caregiver. But without clear names, we struggle to talk about these patterns with precision—so they remain felt, but unnamed.
Finding and naming these archetypes is like creating a standardized color palette: it streamlines communication and exposes biases. Instead of vague criticisms like “they take over everything,” you might say: “they’re leaning into the Hero archetype”—someone who steps up in high-stakes moments and takes responsibility fast. That taps into shared context and opens up a more useful conversation about strengths, risks, and situational fit.
So, the goal of this article is to provide a thorough framework for Engineering Manager archetypes — built on real-world patterns I’ve observed in fast-scaling startups and Big Tech.
These Engineering Manager (EM) archetypes should clarify the force a manager brings to a team. It’s not about pigeonholing anyone, but rather understanding where you naturally thrive, how to harness your strengths, and what complementary skills will help you grow.
By the end, you’ll know which quadrant you most often lean into and how to leverage it for greater impact.
So here is the agenda:
🧠 Where do archetypes come from — from classical psychology to modern leadership.
🔬 Limits of existing EM archetypes — why we shouldn’t focus only on skills and tasks.
🪞 Images of leadership — moving from skills to modes of operation.
📊 Engineering management quadrants — balancing stability, change, people and execution.
👥 Engineering manager archetypes — identifying both productive and failure modes.
🎯 How to use archetypes — for your personal growth and your team success.
🗳️ How to find your archetype — with a little help from AI.
Let’s dive in!
🧠 Where do archetypes come from
Human archetypes might look like the quintessential engineering abstraction, like design patterns for people, but the idea goes way back. Carl Jung used the term to describe recurring roles we instinctively recognize: the Hero, the Mentor, the Caregiver. He believed these patterns lived in a kind of collective unconscious: a shared mental codebase built over generations.
If a Large Language Model learns from the collective text of the internet, Jung’s collective unconscious is like humanity’s behavioral dataset. Archetypes are reusable modules in this repository, shaping how we respond to leadership styles, team dynamics, conflict, and change—often without us realizing it.
Today, archetypes are often used as shorthand for types or patterns. However, I’m using them more deliberately here—to describe the recurring roles we step into when we lead and collaborate. And no, this isn’t new in tech. 👇
🔬 Existing EM archetypes
If you ask Google or your favorite LLM about Engineering Manager Archetypes, you will likely get a combination of 3 articles, written by some of the most knowledgeable people in the industry: Pat Kua, Charity Majors, and Will Larson.
These are largely different frameworks, with some ideas in common:
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