You Don’t Need to Be the Best Engineer to Lead: Engineering Management Clarity with Cecilia Borg

There’s a moment many women in tech reach quietly.

You’ve built credibility as an engineer. You’re the person people trust. And then leadership comes knocking.

But instead of feeling excited, you feel pressure.

Because the unspoken message is: if you become a manager, you have to keep proving you’re still technical. Still sharp. Still “one of the best.”

In this episode of From a Woman to a Leader, I sat down with Cecilia Borg, an experienced CTO and transformation leader with a career spanning Spotify, King, Oracle, and more.

And we named the myth that holds so many women back: that management is what you do when you’re not a great developer.

What engineering managers actually do

Cecilia laid it out in a way I wish every company would adopt.

Engineering leaders are responsible for:

Delivery: not doing all the work, but ensuring the team can deliver consistently
Team health: the environment, the dynamics, the way people grow
Capacity and strategy: looking ahead and building the team’s ability to deliver more over time
Translation: interpreting the organization’s priorities and making them meaningful for the team

This is real value. And it is not “soft.” It’s what turns engineering effort into business outcomes.

Why the 50/50 manager-coder model breaks people

One of the most practical moments in our conversation was Cecilia’s explanation of why splitting the role often fails.

Engineering requires deep focus. You need hours to hold a problem in your head, explore options, and build a clean solution.

Management is the opposite. You’re interrupted constantly. People need decisions. Support. Context. Alignment. Feedback.

When companies ask for both at once, they often get half-results everywhere: less leadership for the team, and fragmented technical contribution.

Staying technical without trying to be the expert

Here’s the nuance I loved: Cecilia isn’t saying leaders should be disconnected from the tech.

She’s saying you should stay close in ways that matter:

code reviews
pairing or shadowing engineers for an hour
asking the right questions
working with staff engineers, architects, or tech leads to understand tradeoffs
translating complexity into an executive narrative

It’s “technical enough” for leadership, without becoming the bottleneck.

The part no one warns you about

Leadership has a price.

Cecilia talked openly about the reality that managers can’t always be transparent. You will hold confidential information about people and business strategy, and you will be questioned for it.

Some people will understand.

Some won’t.

That’s part of the role no one prepares you for.

You will know things you cannot share.

You will make decisions that won’t make sense to everyone in the moment.

And sometimes, people will judge your leadership based on what you didn’t say.

That doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong.

It means you’re holding responsibility.

If you’re a new manager navigating that shift, you’re not imagining it.

And you’re not alone.

What I want you to hear clearly

You do not need to be the most technical person in the room to lead engineers well.

Your value is not in having every answer.

It’s in asking better questions.

It’s in protecting focus.

It’s in creating clarity where there is noise.

It’s in building capacity, not being the hero.

And if your company expects you to code half the time and manage the rest, I want to say this plainly:

Those are two different modes of work.

Deep focus versus constant context switching.

Creation versus coordination.

When you’re asked to do both, you often end up feeling like you’re failing at both.

You’re not failing.

The role is poorly designed.

Define the role before it defines you

One of the most important leadership moves you can make is this:

Define what success actually looks like before others decide it for you.

What are you accountable for?

How will your impact be measured?

What tradeoffs are being made when you split your time?

If those answers are vague, the pressure will land on you to “just make it work.”

Clarity is not a luxury.

It’s a leadership tool.

About Cecilia:

Cecilia Borg is an experienced CTO and transformation leader with experience from Spotify, gaming company King, Oracle, and many more. She’s a DevOps evangelist working with engineers, peers, and leadership to establish a tech culture and organization where people thrive and can innovate. She’s on a mission to cross-pollinate the Stockholm tech scene, working as an interim product development leader, advisor, and board member.

Connect with Cecilia:

Follow Cecilia on LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/cecilia-borg-3a53b5/⁠

Resources site: ⁠www.doitanyway.se⁠

Engineering Leaders (Sweden): ⁠https://www.engineeringleaders.se/⁠

Listen and watch the full episode

If you’re stepping into engineering leadership, or you’re already there and quietly questioning whether you’re doing it right, this episode will give you language for what you’re experiencing and a clearer picture of what the role is actually meant to be.

Listen to the full episode of From a Woman to a Leader with Cecilia Borg.

And as you do, ask yourself one honest question:

Where are you still trying to prove you belong, instead of leading from the role you already have?

Listen on the podcast: https://limorbergman.com/podcast/