The Standard Tech/Engineering Manager Role Is Dead. How You Survive 2027

Organizations are flattening.

The standard tech/engineering manager role, one person leading one team of technical people, goes away first.

That leaves two paths: grow up into a director running 20+ people, or step down into a deep technical role like staff engineer or product builder.

Both paths need the same three things, and at ELC Meetup #43 at Apify we go through each one.

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What we’ll cover:

• AI. Understand it well enough to decide what your team builds with it.
• Product thinking. Know why a feature exists before you plan how to build it.
• Self-management. Run your own priorities, learning and week without someone doing it for you.
• The surprise: marketing and sales. The leaders who win in 2027 can follow one feature end to end, from idea through product and development to marketing and sales.

🎙️Yurii Bliuchak [Apify]:

• How his team moved from full days of meetings to building value. Enabling AI tools, knowing the product, fighting for the value in it, and how his role and the team culture changed along the way.

🎙️ Jan Vrtiska [Everpure]:

• AI is changing not only how engineers work, but also what engineering leadership means. Jan will share practical lessons from his experience navigating this shift and explore how the role of engineering managers is evolving.
  From AI and product thinking to ownership, decision-making and leadership, the talk will look at the skills and behaviors that may become increasingly important for engineering leaders in the years ahead.

You leave with:

• A clear call on your own path: grow up or step down.
• A self-check against the three must-haves: AI, product thinking, self-management.
• One concrete first step toward understanding how your features get marketed and sold.

This meetup is made possible by Apify.

Come if you lead engineers today and plan to still lead them in 2028.

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What makes our meetups different:

• Action-oriented: Every talk includes takeaway guides/frameworks you can photograph or access via QR code
• Case study focused: Real implementations, real results, real failures
• Interactive: Audience Q&A with people who have done this themselves
• Practical: Skip the vendor pitches—hear from practitioners

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For tech/engineering managers, directors and CTOs who want a plan for their role in 2027, not another AI tools demo.