Engineering managers are paralyzed by the wrong fears

Fear of failure costs $36B annually.

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You’re afraid to get that underperformer on a PIP. Afraid to challenge your VP’s technical direction. Afraid to admit you don’t know something in front of your team.

Here’s what you should actually fear: spending another year managing the same way while your best engineers leave for companies that move faster.

Fear-based management costs organizations $36 billion annually in lost productivity. It suppresses 85% of innovation efforts. Teams operating under fear-driven leaders see 90% declines in productivity, and defensive decision-making costs organizations 10.8% of annual revenue in lost opportunities.

When I was researching this topic and came across these metrics, I was shocked!

I believe that the fear of failure that feels protective actually creates the conditions for the worst outcomes.

The vicious cycle

When you micromanage because you’re afraid things won’t get done right, your team stops taking initiative. When you avoid difficult conversations because you want to be liked, problems compound until they become crises. When you want certainty before trying anything new, you train your engineers to hide failures and stop innovating.

This is the self-fulfilling prophecy of fear-based management. Your protective measures trigger the defensive behaviors you were trying to prevent.

A new engineering manager afraid of losing control starts micromanaging. The team interprets this as lack of trust and stops proposing ambitious solutions. The best engineers leave. Velocity drops. The manager gets scared even more and micromanages harder.

The manager’s fear of things going wrong guarantees they will.

The cost

Most engineering leaders tell me they persistently have imposter syndrome. That feeling of “somebody will find out I have no idea what I’m doing”. This drives new managers to keep doing IC work to feel productive, avoid delegating mission-critical projects, and skip the difficult conversations that would actually help their teams improve.

Mid-level managers face different challenges. They’re caught between executive directives and the team reality, afraid to disappoint either direction. 40% of organizations provide zero career development resources for these managers, yet they’re critical to executing the company’s strategy.

Senior leaders have to deal with strategic bet anxiety and board pressures. They might struggle to justify technical debt work to the board who just “doesn’t get it”. They make layoff decisions affecting hundreds while fearing they’ll be remembered as “the leader who ran things into the ground”.

Fear increases with every promotion because the blast radius of mistakes grows and stakes keep rising.

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The teams that move faster

The most innovative teams at Amazon, Stripe, and Google don’t eliminate fear.

Instead of fearing bold action might fail, their managers fear that inaction means competitors outpacing them, technical debt compounding until systems become unmaintainable, and building cultures where people optimize for safety over excellence.

Netflix’s “Keeper Test” forces this question: If this person wanted to leave, how hard would I fight to keep them? If the answer is “not very hard”, they part ways with them quickly. This requires overcoming the fear of an empty seat to avoid the worse outcome of a mediocre team.

Amazon’s “Bias for Action” principle explicitly says: “Many decisions are reversible and do not need extensive study. We value calculated risk taking.” Jeff Bezos pushed it even further: “If you double the number of experiments you do per year, you’re going to double your inventiveness”.

These aren’t fearless organizations. They’re organizations that channel fear toward the right things.

What you’d maybe do differently

If you knew you couldn’t fail, what would change?

Hiring: You’d make offers at 70% certainty instead of needing perfect signal. You’d hire unconventional candidates you’re willing to teach. Stripe’s engineering managers attend every Candidate Review session to ensure high standards are kept.

Performance management: You’d have difficult conversations immediately instead of waiting. You’d address toxic high performers who damage culture regardless of technical output. Kim Scott’s example: her manager told her “When you say ‘um’ every third word, it makes you sound stupid”. That directness changed Kim’s career, yet it’s exactly the conversation most managers avoid.

Technical decisions: You’d distinguish between reversible “two-way door” decisions requiring speed and irreversible “one-way door”. You’d deploy fast to learn rather than waiting for everything to be perfect. You’d embrace refactoring over complete rewrites (Netscape’s decision to rewrite from scratch cost them the browser war).

Organizational structure: You’d execute needed reorganizations immediately instead of living with dysfunction for months.

Difficult conversations: You’d challenge peer conflicts directly rather than working around them. You’d give upward feedback to your manager. You’d negotiate your salary more (and the ones of your teams).

The foundation

Psychological safety isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the #1 predictor of team effectiveness.

Psychological safety requires both high accountability AND low interpersonal fear. Not one or the other. Teams need to operate in the “learning zone” with both dimensions high, not the “comfort zone” of high safety without accountability.

Behaviors that destroy psychological safety:

• Public criticism or humiliation

• Micromanagement driven by control needs

• Avoiding conflict and difficult conversations

• Requiring extensive justification before trying anything new

• Treating vulnerability as weakness

The single most powerful tool for building psychological safety is leader vulnerability. When you share your failures and struggles, you demonstrate that imperfection is safe.

How to redirect your fear

You can’t eliminate fear. But you can choose what to fear.

Start with cognitive restructuring. When you feel fear about a decision, write down:

• What specifically am I afraid will happen?

• What evidence supports this?

• What’s the worst realistic outcome, and how would I handle it?

• What will matter in five years?

Most “worst cases” are temporary setbacks.

Use pre-mortems for big decisions. Before launching an initiative, assume it failed completely. Have your team generate reasons why. This makes concerns explicit and shifts you from fear-paralysis to fear-management through preparation.

Practice the 10/10/10 rule. How will you feel about this decision in 10 minutes? 10 months? 10 years? This overcomes short-term emotion and will show you what actually matters.

Model the behavior you want. Admit mistakes publicly. Share what you’re learning from failures. Thank people for disagreeing. The teams with the highest psychological safety have leaders who demonstrate that imperfection is not just tolerated, it’s expected.

What you can change tomorrow

Pick one fear-driven pattern you want to break:

If you avoid difficult conversations: Schedule one this week and prepare for it. State the issue directly at the beginning. Come from genuine concern for growth, not judgment.

If you micromanage: Delegate one project. Provide context and constraints, then let the engineer find their own path while offering support. Resist the urge to control the implementation.

If you wait for perfect information: Make one two-way door decision at 70% certainty. Document what you expect to learn and set a date to evaluate whether to reverse it.

If you avoid conflict: Challenge one decision you disagree with this week. Use “disagree and commit”, respectfully challenge with conviction, then commit wholly once decided.

The goal isn’t to become fearless. It’s to fear the right things.

Fear mediocrity more than mistakes.
Fear stagnation more than experimentation.
Fear the consequences of inaction more than the risks of bold action.

The managers who understand this paradox build the teams everyone wants to join. Not because fear disappeared, but because they channeled it toward building something excellent with people who are constantly growing.

What do you think? Let me know! I love hearing from you.

See you in the next one,
~ Stephane