You want to meet other engineering leaders in person, so you search for a local meetup. You find a long list of groups, most last active in 2018. This is a shorter, honest list of the ones that are still running.
Here is the reality before the links. The in-person engineering leadership scene has narrowed to two franchise networks that show up in city after city, LeadDev and the Engineering Leadership Community (ELC), plus a handful of genuine independents that have lasted. A lot of the standalone "EM meetup" groups that started between 2016 and 2019 are now dead or dormant. If you have clicked into one of those and found the last event was years ago, you were not doing it wrong. The group stopped.
So this list sticks to 9 meetups that were active as of writing, grouped by city. Where a group is part of a franchise, that is worth knowing: it usually means a predictable format and a schedule that survives one organizer moving on. That last part matters more than it sounds. Most dead meetups did not fail for lack of interest. They failed because the one person running them got busy, and there was nobody set up to keep it going.
Amsterdam
1. Engineering Leadership NL
An independent, country-wide group for engineering managers, tech leads, and CTOs across the Netherlands. Because it is not tied to one company, the crowd tends to mix startup and scale-up leaders, which makes for useful hallway conversations. Engineering Leadership NL on Meetup.
2. LeadDev Meetup Amsterdam
Part of the LeadDev network. These are free, run roughly quarterly, and are hosted at local companies that offer their space. The talks lean practical, the kind of thing a first-time manager can use on Monday. LeadDev meetups.
Berlin
3. LeadDev Meetup Berlin
Berlin has had a lot of engineering meetups come and go. The clearly active leadership option now is the LeadDev chapter: free, quarterly, same practical format as the other LeadDev cities. If you only have time for one in Berlin, this is the safe pick. LeadDev Meetup Berlin.
London
4. London CTOs
A long-running independent group for CTOs and technical directors. It has outlasted most of its peers, which is the best signal you can get for a meetup. The room skews senior, so it is a better fit once you are running a function than on your first week as a lead. London CTOs on Meetup.
5. CTO Craft Mixers
Free, in-person networking evenings for senior technical leaders, run by CTO Craft. Less talk-and-slides, more structured conversation and meeting people. If your goal is to build a small circle of peers you can message later, mixers are built for that. CTO Craft Mixers.
San Francisco and the Bay Area
6. ELC / SFELC
The Engineering Leadership Community started in San Francisco in 2016 and is the original chapter, sometimes written SFELC. It runs the largest and most established engineering leadership events in the Bay Area, and the parent organization is behind the ELC chapters in other cities on this list. SFELC.
7. ELC Silicon Valley
A sister chapter to SFELC with its own meetups, aimed at leaders down the peninsula who do not want to drive into the city on a weeknight. Same community, closer to home if you are based in the South Bay. ELC Silicon Valley on Meetup.
New York
8. LeadDev Meetup New York
The New York LeadDev chapter, free, and often hosted at the New York Times Building. Same format as the other LeadDev cities, so if you have been to one in another city you already know what to expect. LeadDev Meetup New York on Meetup.
9. ELC NYC
The New York chapter of the Engineering Leadership Community, which runs roundtables alongside larger sessions. Roundtables cap the group size, so they are good when you actually want to talk instead of listen. Check the community events page for what is next. ELC events.
If nothing is near you: two remote-first options
Not every city has a live group anymore, and that is fine. Two remote-first communities pick up the slack for a lot of leaders. The Rands Leadership Slack is a large, active Slack for engineering leaders with channels for almost every topic a manager runs into, from hiring to layoffs to your first skip-level. It is free to join and moves fast. Join the Rands Leadership Slack. CTO Craft also runs an online community alongside its in-person mixers, so you can get the peer network without waiting for an event in your city. Both are a better bet than driving an hour to a group whose last event was in 2019.
How to tell if a meetup is actually alive
Since so many groups have gone quiet, use a quick check before you plan an evening around one. Look at the date of the last event. If it is more than six months old, treat the group as dormant. Check whether events are scheduled, not just listed. And favor franchise chapters (LeadDev, ELC) or independents that have run for years, because both have shown they can survive an organizer leaving. A group that has met every quarter for three years will almost certainly meet next quarter too.
The point of going
The value of these rooms is not the talks. It is the five people you meet who are one step ahead of you, dealing with the exact problem you will hit in three months. You go so that when that problem arrives, you have someone to ask.
That is also the quiet cost of leadership work: the answers live in people, and people are not always around when you need them. StandIn is built for the same gap inside a team. You write one short brief at the end of your day, and while you are away it answers your teammates' questions from what you actually wrote, with a source under each answer, and it says so when the answer is not there instead of guessing. The meetups help you build a network. StandIn helps the work you already did keep answering when you step out.
When you're off, your StandIn is on.
It answers your teammates' questions from work you've already done, in your words, with a source under every answer.