# How To Lead Engineers Who Don't Report To You

DevFeed: [How To Lead Engineers Who Don't Report To You](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/how-to-lead-engineers-who-don-t-report-to-you-33544.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://www.softwareengineeringtimes.com/p/how-to-lead-engineers-who-dont-report>)

Author: Ryan Murphy

Published: 2026-08-09T17:17:21Z

Content type: tutorial

Language: en

Sources: [The Software Engineering Times](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/the-software-engineering-times.md>)

Topics: [Software Engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/software-engineering.md>), [engineering-culture](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/engineering-culture.md>), [Development](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/development.md>)

Tags: [engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/engineering.md>), [how-to](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/how-to.md>), [management](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/management.md>), [software-engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/software-engineering.md>)

## AI overview

The article explains why leading engineers without formal reporting authority is especially difficult for tech leads and individual contributors. It argues that they must lead through influence rather than authority and introduces five bases of power--reward, coercion, legitimate, referent, and expert--as a framework for understanding why people follow a request.

## Source excerpt

This is about leading engineers, but the first sentence will piss a lot of people off.