Developer tools

Where to find customers who are engineering managers

Engineering managers buy when a ritual is failing, not when they are posting a career AMA. They argue about skip-levels, calibration packets, on-call fairness, and which tracker the team will actually open on Monday. If you sell Linear, a Jira alternative, incident software a manager can read, 1:1 or performance tools, hiring pipelines, or anything that sits between IC work and a VP slide, the customers you want are already naming the incumbent in public. Start with r/EngineeringManagers, r/ExperiencedDevs, the Rands Leadership Slack, LeadDev talks, and G2 reviews left by 'Engineering Manager' titles. Skip resume threads and 'how do I become an EM' posts. Hunt comments that name a vendor, a failed rollout, or a meeting that ate the sprint. That is a buyer with budget authority for a team of eight to forty, not a job seeker.

Where engineering managers actually hang out

These are the rooms where engineering managers ask for recommendations, compare tools, and name the competitor they want to leave. Start here before you buy ads.

Redditmid-size, high trust
r/EngineeringManagers
This is the default room for people who already have the title. Threads titled 'Jira is a second job for my team' or 'we tried Lattice and nobody wrote a review' are not career advice — they are in-market buyers describing a workflow that is about to get a credit card. Commenters compare rollout pain, admin seats, and whether the tool survived a reorg. You can tell from the comments whether they own the budget or need a director to sign.
Rules gotcha: The subreddit treats vendor accounts as tourists. Disclose if you sell in the category. Do not DM posters from a brand-new Reddit account after they name a competitor.
Redditlarge, skeptical ICs plus managers
r/ExperiencedDevs
Managers lurk here to hear what their teams will not say in a 1:1. When a senior IC writes that the design-doc tool is a graveyard or that the incident bot pages the wrong rotation, an EM is often the next comment asking what to replace it with. That second comment is the buying signal: they are translating IC frustration into a procurement problem. Search for named tools plus 'my manager' or 'our process.'
Rules gotcha: This room hates recruiter energy and product drops. Reply as a practitioner who has run a team through the same mess. Never ask them to book a demo in the first reply.
Slackvery large, invite-gated
Rands Leadership Slack
RLS is where EMs compare skip-level scripts, on-call compensation, and which OKR tool their VP will not mock. Channels about performance, incidents, and tooling get the honest version of a vendor evaluation: 'we outgrew Trello, Jira made the designers mutiny, we are looking at Linear but legal wants SSO tomorrow.' That sentence is a buying committee forming in public. The room is large enough that your category already has a channel.
Rules gotcha: Invite is manual and the Code of Conduct is enforced. Vendors who join only to hunt get named in admin channels. Contribute a playbook before you mention a product. Never scrape member lists.
LinkedInslower, higher ACV
Engineering leadership posts on LinkedIn
Once an EM is managing managers, they spend more time on LinkedIn than Reddit. Posts about calibration, promotion packets, or 'we moved off Jira' collect comments from directors who will forward a useful reply into Slack. A comment that names the constraint — audit trail, permissions, migration of 12,000 tickets — can become an internal thread. This is also where your champion's VP lurks.
Rules gotcha: Skip engagement-bait 'agree if you hate meetings' posts. Reply under operator posts that include a metric, a headcount, or a named vendor. Do not pitch in a hiring post.
YouTubeevergreen comments
LeadDev and engineering-management talks
Conference talks age; the comments do not. An EM watches a session on incident reviews or team topology and then asks which tracker or doc tool the speaker actually ran. Those commenters are researching under a deadline more often than they will admit on a sales call. Pair this with 'I implemented OKRs and regretted it' videos — the description and comments name replacement criteria like 'no consultant required.'
Rules gotcha: Conference channels delete obvious spam. Answer the question in the comment. Link only if someone asks for the product name.
Reviewsdecision-stage
G2 reviews of Linear, Jira, and 1:1 tools
Filter G2 for job title engineering manager and company size 51–500. The 3-star review of Jira, Linear, Lattice, or GitHub Projects is a narrative of the last two quarters: permissions maze, reporting that finance cannot use, a migration that stalled at 60%. The 'substitutes considered' widget maps the exact comparison thread you should be monitoring. Cons paragraphs are product specs, not vibes.
Rules gotcha: Do not astroturf. Replying as a vendor on G2 is fine when you are named. Do not email reviewers off-platform because they left two stars.
Hacker Newstechnical managers
Hacker News manager threads
Staff-plus managers still treat HN as the place to ask whether a performance-review SaaS is theater and which incident tool survived their last SEV-1. The gold is not Show HN. It is the comment on a Jira, Notion, or PagerDuty thread where someone says their team mutinied after a forced rollout. 'Ask HN: how do you run on-call for a team of twelve?' is a buying committee of one with a card and a VP to convince.
Rules gotcha: Anything that reads like marketing gets flagged. No tracking links. Answer the operational question in the comment itself before the product exists in the sentence.

How engineering managers talk about their problems

Search and replies land when you use their words, not your category name. These phrases show up in threads when they are close to buying or switching.

skip-level 1:1
calibration packet
on-call fairness
we outgrew Trello
Jira is a second job
staff engineer vs manager track
incident review without blame
span of control
unplanned work ate the sprint
legal wants SSO tomorrow
team topology

What engineering managers complain about — and what that means

PainHuntr classifies conversations by intent: actively asking, comparing, frustrated, discussing, or a passing mention. The quotes below are the shape of demand, not a promise that a specific post is live today.

Frustrated
“Jira admin is now a part-time job and my designers still will not open tickets. We are a 22-person eng org, not a bank. I need a tracker that survives a reorg without a certified partner.”
r/EngineeringManagers rollout threads, G2 cons on Jira, and LinkedIn posts after a failed Atlassian renewal.
Comparing
“Linear vs Jira vs 'we already pay for GitHub, can we just use Projects.' Legal wants SSO and an audit log. The team wants something that does not take twenty clicks to file a bug.”
Rands Slack tooling channels, Ask HN tracker posts, and YouTube comments under LeadDev process talks.
Actively asking
“Need an incident tool that pages the right rotation and gives me a timeline I can paste into the exec review. PagerDuty is fine until the bill and the noise. What are you actually running for a team of fifteen?”
r/EngineeringManagers on-call threads and HN comments on PagerDuty and incident.io posts.
Discussing
“We added a skip-level cadence and realized none of our tools show me which projects are quietly dying. The data is in Jira, Slack, and a spreadsheet the TPM owns.”
LinkedIn engineering-leadership posts and slower Rands channels about visibility and status.
Mention
“Ran Q3 calibration in the same Google Doc as last year. Not changing it unless HR forces a new system.”
Career-process tweets and milestone posts. Low intent unless a reply thread starts arguing about Lattice or Culture Amp.

Search queries that surface engineering managers in buying mode

Paste these into Google, Reddit, or X search. They are the manual version of what PainHuntr runs when you paste a product URL.

site:reddit.com/r/EngineeringManagers (Jira OR Linear OR Lattice OR PagerDuty) (switching OR alternative OR hated)

site:reddit.com/r/ExperiencedDevs ("my manager" OR "our process") (Jira OR on-call OR tracker)

site:news.ycombinator.com "Ask HN" (engineering manager OR on-call OR performance review) (tool OR alternative)

("engineering manager" OR "eng manager") ("we moved off" OR "migrating off" OR "too expensive") (Jira OR Linear)

site:g2.com ("engineering manager" OR "engineering lead") (cons) (Jira OR Linear OR Lattice)

site:youtube.com LeadDev (Jira OR incident OR OKR) (regretted OR switched)

How to reach engineering managers without getting ignored

Lead with the people constraint they already named — skip-levels, on-call fairness, a tracker the designers will not open, SSO that legal is blocking — and answer that in the first two lines. Engineering managers skim like they are late to a 1:1, because they are. They will take a 20-minute call if you have a customer with a similar span of control and a migration plan for tickets, not a discovery interrogation. They will not take a 'quick chat about developer experience' that is clearly your funnel. Offer a sandbox with a fake team of twelve pre-loaded. Never pitch in a hiring thread or a promotion-packet AMA. If they are still writing code, a changelog and an admin screenshot beat a deck. If they just hired a TPM, talk about status and unplanned work, not 'empowering ICs.' Disclose when you sell in the category. These rooms screenshot slimy replies and paste them into Rands.

Frequently asked questions

Are engineering managers the same buyer as startup CTOs?

No. A CTO is shopping for org design, vendor consolidation, and board-level risk. An EM is shopping for the tracker, the incident bot, and the 1:1 tool their team of twelve will actually use. Overlap exists on HN and LinkedIn, but the vocabulary and the ACV do not. If you pitch platform strategy to an EM you will sound like a conference. If you pitch a standup bot to a CTO you will sound like a toy.

Where do engineering managers complain about Jira and 1:1 software?

r/EngineeringManagers, Rands Leadership Slack tooling channels, G2 cons filtered by title, and LinkedIn when the pain is political. HN when the manager still writes code. Watch for 'certified partner' and 'admin as a second job' as buying criteria, not jokes.

Is the Rands Slack worth joining if I sell to EMs?

Yes if you will contribute for months. No if you want a lead list. The invite is gated and vendors who hunt get a reputation that travels to LeadDev and Twitter. Public Reddit, HN, and G2 are easier to monitor at scale. Use RLS only after you have something useful to say in a non-sales channel.

How do I tell a career-advice poster from a buyer?

Look for a named tool, a headcount, a failed rollout, or a ritual with a date. 'How do I become an EM' is not a buyer. 'We outgrew Trello, Jira made designers mutiny, legal wants SSO this quarter' is a buyer. PainHuntr's asking, comparing, and frustrated labels exist for that cut.

What should I paste into PainHuntr if I sell to engineering managers?

Your product URL plus the incumbent they already live in — Jira, Linear, PagerDuty, Lattice, GitHub Projects. The engine looks for people asking for a replacement, comparing options, and venting about a tool that ate the sprint. Pair that with the queries on this page if you still want to hunt by hand.

Related audiences

Reading 1,000 threads a month doesn't scale. PainHuntr does.

Paste your product URL. PainHuntr finds the conversations where engineering managers ask, compare, and complain on Reddit, X, Hacker News, YouTube, and review sites — then helps you reply, track what worked, and do it again.

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