Yup, that's a common career path mistake companies do - making the only possible 'next step' for senior engineers to become managers. If your company doesn't have a strong career path for senior ICs, you should push for one
I've a feeling that Senior Engineer is going to go forever. Trying to move into technical managerial roles not working out since new companies don't want to make ICs into managers.
Most companies have no use for very senior ICs. They don’t have much difficult work and a lot of managers want to involve themselves in technical decisions so once you have reached a certain level there is no room to grow. Either go into management or stagnate.
I experienced the exact same thing, and have watched the mediocre engineers that went straight for management move up the chain. IC engineering just doesnt have that good of career advancement. The cynical career advice is to just move into management as soon as possible.
At least at many big companies, there’s a dual career ladder for ICs and managers, with equal pay across equivalent levels (e.g. Manager ~ Senior engineer, Director ~ Principal Engineer)
The problem: while there is absolutely a need for very senior level ICs, there is simply less of one than there is for managers, so despite parallel career tracks existing, advancement often substantially more available via a management track.
Just to clarify when you say IC you mean literally an IC as opposed to the leadership path in an IC vertical? Many companies expect hither level ICs to be leaders in one way or another, you don’t need to go down the management path.
A fair number of people get "stuck" at the senior level because they enjoy being ICs more than they enjoy being managers, but their company promotion track doesn't support having high leveled ICs so they either have to accept less money and prestige, or force themselves into a role that they don't like.
> I think there is still a bit of a perception that IC levels higher than Senior are about "Senior but with more interesting technical problems". This is largely false. In most organizations those roles are about empowering other people. You can see this if you read the stories Will Larson's new book, Staff Engineer: Leadership Beyond the Management Track.
I think that's _one_ way to do it, but it defeats the purpose of having an IC path. It's basically "ship code while being a lite-manager". There's space for more types of staff+ engineers than "manager-lite" versions of the role.
I'm in a semi rebellion with exactly the description you provide, because I find it's short-sighted. We need to allow these roles to be anywhere along the spectrum from manager-like to purely technical. The best description I found of these more senior roles is that they give you license to build the role you wish to have. Kind of like being a tenure professor.
Here's my own self-defined role definition: focus on exploration and research along with mentoring my peers into becoming the next version of themselves. On the other hand, I have no interest in managing the day to day process; it gets in the way of my primary goals.
Yea at my company, we consider moving from senior eng to level 1 mgr a parallel move, and many senior engineers have tried management, decided it wasn’t right for them, and made arrangements to move back to IC. It has worked out really well for us. I made the move from IC to manager at this company, ended up liking management a lot more than I thought I would, and am staying in management for the foreseeable future. I probably never would have made the move if there wasn’t an escape hatch to go back to IC.
Would be great to see more companies using a similar model.
I am a senior IC transitions to management. I think these articles leave out a very significant part of the equation and that is compensation and career mobility. Generally the management track at higher levels has more openings. If you stay in the IC track, there are going to be much fewer openings at that level with appropriate compensation. This is particularly true the more specialized your knowledge is. Moving to management track provides more opportunity at the same/similar or greater compensation. The exception to this are the FAANG companies but in my experience it’s way easier to get in through the leadership ladder than through the senior IC ladder. At least that was my experience in the 2 I’ve worked for. In one of the FAANG I worked for, I joined as a senior IC but was given a very non-senior manager and was effectively treated as a junior engineer during the 1st year.
I did not suggest to replace managers with engineers, just give an opportunity to work and be represented on more strategic level to some engineers. It can be seen as a good career progression for ICs.
Another +1, I left a startup over exactly this, all the managers, directors, and VP of engineering were IC engineers maybe 2 years prior. It was a shame, because I really enjoyed my role at that company in general, but ended up opting to leave after getting a really terrible leader.
Interesting discussion. Every tech company I know of has a career path for engineers who don't want to get into management (with roles like staff, senior staff, principal, distinguished engineer, technical fellow etc.) and so you can keep progressing basically indefinitely as an IC. I have never seen this done on the product side, however. After a point every product manager has to start to focus on people management to get ahead, which undoubtedly has a negative effect on the product itself. I wonder if more companies will start following this approach for non-technical roles as well.
Good managers are few and far between and there are many ways to fail in the role. If you have low level ICs then you’ve got to be contributing as well, leading from the front. If you have high performing ICs then you need to instead be a coach, protecting and representing your talent to the next level up.
The best engineering teams need the latter but a lot of managers come up through the ranks looking for a role like the former. I know Meta played that game for a long time and I can completely see why they want to walk it back. They need their high performing ICs to actually do stuff again and start shipping diffs. The luxury of being there to level up the noobs is over, for now.
> One problem is high-contributing ICs who think they should get promotions to manager. For whatever reason
Because traditionally that's the only way to get better comp' once you reach a certain point. In most companies, regardless of your IC and management skills if you don't step on the management track you're going to cap out pretty fast.
They do, but it's vastly easier to get promoted to those levels as a manager, because the organization needs managers to function, but super senior ICs are less critical.
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