You don’t need to be a manager to have a successful career in the engineering industry
You don’t need to be a manager to have a successful career in the engineering industry
It's totally fine to be the best IC and grow in this path!
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Let’s get back to this week’s thought.
Intro
Every person is unique and what may be a dream role for someone, may be a nightmare for someone else. It’s important to play to your strengths and what fits you best.
The stigma that you need to become a manager in order to have a successful career in the engineering industry has been quite prominent in our industry for some time now.
With this article, I will break down why the IC path is a great path to take and that you can be equally successful than if you take on the management path.
Let me tell you a bit about my experience working with great ICs first!
Some of the best people I worked with didn’t want to become managers
I had the pleasure of working with some really great people in our industry and they didn't want to become managers.
They were really great technically,
they enjoyed being in fine details,
they enjoyed helping and supporting others with coaching and mentoring.
They were leaders, just in a different way and it’s totally fine to be like that. They brought SO much value to the organization by being like that.
They were making great technical decisions and being great engineers to work with - with the right attitude and mindset. They were a great example for others and also inspired others to be like them.
They were not just doing great work, but they also greatly contributed to making others around them better.
Engineers who are like that contribute enormous value to the organization. Companies that haven’t yet normalized the IC path → you are definitely missing out!
It’s totally fine to be the greatest IC and have a successful career, I’ll tell you why!
There are many reasons for that and here are the most prominent ones:
You can receive a similar level of compensation (Staff / Principal level makes a similar amount to that of the director or VP)
This is the average compensation in the United States in Google L6 - Staff SWE:
It’s important to mention that L7 - Senior Staff SWE makes on average around 740k $.
And a Senior Director at Microsoft makes around 628k $:
The level of difficulty of the job just grows and you never stop learning in either of the paths.
Both paths are challenging and have unique things you need to learn. In the management path, you have direct and indirect reports and in the IC path you don’t have reports, but you still need to influence others.
So one thing is very prominent in both → that is leadership. In both, you need to learn to become a leader, because you need to influence and inspire others.
Both are extremely valuable to the company and each brings value, just in a different way.
As mentioned above, some of the best people I worked with were ICs and they have provided immense value to the business by making the right technical decisions and making others around them better.
The same goes for managers. The good ones are extremely valuable. You can read why here: Good managers are hard to find and once you have them, they should be appreciated (paid article).
If that’s better suited for you, you’ll have a much better time than if you would force your way into something that is not meant for you.
It’s very important that you enjoy what you do because that’s how you can really do the best work possible. Having fun while at the same time doing your work will contribute a LOT to your better mental health overall.
Remember, we are doing this for the long run and your well-being plays a huge role in being able to do good work long-term.
There are more opportunities available worldwide for Staff Engineers than for Directors of Engineering.
By doing a search on LinkedIn Jobs for ‘staff engineer” and “director of engineering”, we can see there are more results for the first one, which means more such roles are available worldwide.
ICs will be taking on more and more responsibilities in the future.
Especially with the emergence of AI → product/business understanding and good communication + problem-solving abilities will be more and more important for ICs.
So the role will expand and I believe there will be more and more demand for engineers who are good technically and at the same time can communicate well and understand the product/business + are great problem solvers.
I see the trend moving in the direction where management path and IC path will get closer together
This is how I see the trend moving forward. Managers to be expected to take on Staff Engineer role if needed and Engineers becoming more self-managed.
So, managers taking on more technical-related challenges and ICs expected to be better at product/business and communication/collaboration.
That’s also my suggestion to all the managers to stay technically savvy and not neglect these skills and for ICs to be very curious about the product/business and focus on their people skills.
Not sure yet which is the right path for you to take?
When I was a Senior SWE, I was kinda stuck and was stagnating because I didn’t know which was the right path for me to take.
I would be growing and moving faster if I knew and understood exactly what is the right path for me to take.
If you are feeling like that, then I highly recommend taking a read of this article: Which is the right engineering career path for you? (paid article) or you can also get the Engineering Career Path Guide from here: 🎁 Products for paid subscribers.
I noted down what you can expect in each of the path and my personal recommendation which may be the right fit for you.
Last words
I took the management path and I really believe that’s the right path for me, I noted why here: From IC to manager (paid article). But that doesn’t mean that it’s for everyone.
If you like to be very much in the details and learning new concepts and patterns is what you like to do + you like to be an expert in particular technologies that you work with.
It’s a good sign that the IC path might be a good path for you and you should definitely pursue this path if that’s the case!
We are not over yet!
Senior Engineer to Lead: Grow and thrive in the role (upcoming Cohort in November)
The first week of September’s Cohort has been now completed! I’m having a lot of fun and there have been SO many insightful questions asked. Kudos to all the students for being so interactive and driven to learn!
It’s a pure joy to be teaching a course when students are like that. We spent almost half of the sessions discussing questions relevant to the student’s specific cases!
If you wish to enroll in November’s Cohort, you can follow this link: Senior Engineer to Lead. It’s going to be the last Cohort this year!
Looking forward to seeing you there.
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You are more than welcome to find whatever interests you here and try it out in your particular case. Let me know how it went! Topics are normally about all things engineering related, leadership, management, developing scalable products, building teams etc.
Great points. I see too many companies making the mistake of asking their EM's to code more when they really should let the manager focus on supporting and coaching while promoting senior SWE's into staff and principal roles where they can provide deeply technical leadership and mentoring. That way they have all the essentials covered.
Excellent article! It's refreshing to see that I'm not the only one who experienced the stigma of the career path. I always thought that if I didn't set my goals on management that my career goals weren't "serious". I can see how my strengths in mentorship and technical discussion would be just as valuable as an IC.