Engineer or People Leader?

I'll cut to the point of the article; it's here to help you make the decision of where to go with your career in tech, maybe even other industries. Whether you are a leader or you are what's called an "individual contributor" (or IC as they call), if you're really good or you're just trying to set your eyes forward on some sort of goal, you'll eventually hit this crossroad. You'll be in an engineer role, work your way up through the ranks, suddenly your manager or supervisor leaves or is moved, and everyone is pitching you up to it, or maybe you want to try and interview for it. Or maybe you've become a leader and there's something that just doesn't feel right about it.

My goal here isn't to convince you either way, but rather to break down what it's like in each role and what type of skills and work you'll be doing. Then at that point, it's up to you and who you are to make the decision.

Alright, so before we begin, let’s talk about what each is at its core. Now an IC, you are basically a skilled worker. Your job is mostly to troubleshoot, build, perform tasks, resolve issues, etc. - things like that. As you advance and grow in rank, you get different titles that distinguish your skill level from those around you - such as level 1-4, or Senior, Staff, Principle. There are also such roles as team lead or tech lead - but don’t get these confused with leadership; they really aren’t people focused. They are technology, training, and process focused roles. As a lead, you’ve invested yourself as a leader within the team, but you have no responsibilities as far as people go. You kind of take ownership of the health of the team from a tech and outside influence perspective.

As a people leader, those start as supervisor and end at senior director/VP. After that, you’re considered C Suite. So in this role, your technical skills are not the focus. Typically they do require the knowledge, but not necessarily the skills. What I mean is say you're a development manager, you don't need to be so good that you can build or put in bug fixes (though companies do appreciate that), but rather that you know what goes into it, and know what the code is supposed to do. The rest of your job revolves around workflow, visibility, intake, and strategy. If you've never been in leadership, then that probably sounds like a bunch of bogus to you, so let me explain. Workflow is how work comes in, and how it's processed through the team. Visibility is the meeting, being in leader meetings, and cross functional work. Intake is making sure projects, initiatives, and goals are all brought into the team in the right manner. Strategy is how you implement all of those things I mentioned above.

If you haven't picked it up by now, the leader vs IC role are actually two very different paths and skillsets. One of them revolving around people, the other revolves around skill and ownership. Let's get into the two roles.

Well... one more thing. A lot depends on the company. What I am going to hit here is bare bones of each role. Depending on your company, it's size, and who's leading it, there could be many different hats you wear. Which is fine. What I am trying to do is give you an outline.

I'll start here, because my guess is if you're reading this, you're most likely an IC looking to get into leadership, and that's completely reasonable to want to read up on it. I've been on the path of IC to leader... in fact a couple of times. So I can speak from experience here.

What's it Like?

Recall if you will, the four things I mentioned before; workflow, visibility, intake, and strategy. Note something very specific about each of these - none of these are... per say tasks. Everything here is an ongoing effort, a pivot, or just being a filter. It's something that's caught me by surprise each time, because as a leader, you don't have "done" things... you just have things that are going well and aren't going well. Nothing actually ever ends. Your performance is based on what your team completes, not you. It's judged by how satisfied your people are, not how much you've satisfied anything else. It's very ambiguous. So if you're looking to get into the management thinking - "oh it's just a bunch of tasks in the leader realm instead of an engineer realm" then you're sadly mistaken. As a leader, you'll always have a backlog, pipeline, and current set of things happening and none of them are little checkboxes. It's all in the air.

Notice also how all of those 4 things are "people" based. So yes, as a manager, you deal with your people, their happiness, complaints, PTO, and all that jazz, but know that the rest of your job is in a similar vein. Raising visibility means being in the right meetings and presenting the right way. It's about using the right terms, words, and data. The strategy of your team has to align with the rest of the company, so you're constantly going everywhere. When folks have questions, or need a stakeholder from your group, it's you there to talk about it. Intaking anything into a team in tech is much like playing a PM role, all about people and expectations.

The point I am getting at - 80%+ of your job is simply around talking to people, preparing to talk to people, and finding out who to talk to and in what way. 10% is what I lovingly call "HR crap" and the other 10% is tech. It's about pitching ideas and justifying them. It's about knowledge sharing and recognition. It's about building relationships.

"Right, so okay, are there any other skills you need as a manager?"

Yes, which is the other HUGE thing about being a leader; business acumen and dealings. What's that you ask? Well it's understanding how "the business" (aka your company) operates, what it expects, and how to meet those expectations against your team and it's health and expectations. Ultimately, what affects you as a manager the most is how you help the business succeed with your team, not actually taking care of your team. That's a close second, but you'll get fired for going against the business way faster than you will making a few people miserable.

I'll give a prime example of this. I was over an Ops team, one who received quite literally 15-30 escalations a week, nearly 40% of the work coming in was some sort of "emergency" or "immediate" work. Now, the team wanted to refuse escalations, set expectations of turn around time, and push back. However, while it's not our fault that we receive so many escalations yet we're paying the price, it is our responsibility to process them appropriately. If we did what the team wanted, we'd delay client launches, deployments with customer expectations, new technology and features for clients, and causing other business units to miss deadlines. We can't destroy the business because we get escalated to all the time. So instead we found a way to filter them within the team to address the underlying team concern of context switching. So instead of the whole team taking them on, we built a weekly role for one person to bear that burden for a week, and then have several weeks of not being disturbed. I then decided to gather data on the escalations, putting certain teams and areas of the business on blast, to upshoot what is now called "Crisis Culture." I'd love to say that I helped bring that about, but I know I wasn't the only one complaining about it.

Besides that, there's a few other small, yet important things to note. Leadership is about balance as well - team satisfaction and business demands. It's never a battle that you'll win. You die in the crossfire every time, and you've got to have tough skin to handle it. It's also a very "self driven" type of role, because you'll always have 5 things that need to be done, and you'll be responsible for it, but you'll need to work out how it gets done. Another thing that you should know (and it personally kills me) is how repetitive being a manager actually is. You must repeat goals, repeat scrum processes, repeat 1x1's, repeat performance reviews, repeat information (sometimes the same information 10 times in 10 different places), and parrot what the company wants you to parrot. One more thing is that you have limited power. Most of us think that as manager, you have the power to change it all! And you really don't. You have the power to delegate and maybe change things within your team, like dynamics and workflow. Everything else is a suggestion... and your influence and power to convince drives anything else you can change.

Which leads to another point I didn't know UNTIL I got my first leader position; managing up. What this means is that you'll receive lots of crap from above you, from your boss, to the CEO, and everyone in between, and you have a role there to set proper expectations, kick back with data, and bring light to what's happening so they can make proper decisions.

And lastly showing up. As a leader you must show up. All the time. You can't hide in a hole, bury yourself in work, or just be silent. You have to be leading, be relatable, and being honest and transparent.

What's the pathway up?

So as a leader, it's all the things you would expect - supervisor, manager, senior manager, director, senior director, VP, and then into C levels. It basically works like a pyramid the higher you go. As a manager, you're over a team, maybe a supervisor. As a senior manager, you might be over two different teams, maybe even over a leader or two. As director, you're over some amount of managers that are over their teams. As senior director, you're likely over a department or something. As VP, you're likely over a little more than a department and in the C Level loop at that point, being over directors, who are over manager, who are over supervisors, who are over people.

The biggest challenge with leadership advancement though is really two things - availability and time it takes to gain experience. Managers do move, so do directors, but not like IC's do. People leave and go in the IC world all the time. Because there's less folks in leadership, it tends to happen less often. Remember also when I said nothing ever ends? Your success can't be measured in completed tasks and items like an IC, where they can clearly see your skill and prowess. No, it's about what you do over the long term. So you may in fact after you hit manager, be in that role for 3-5 years before getting to get into senior leadership, another 3-5 to get higher than that, you get the idea. Incentives though, are usually offered at higher levels, so not only do you get a little more power and responsibility, but you'll also get benefits and bonuses as well. If you want to fast track the opportunities, you have to know exactly what you're doing... and job hop. Every couple of years. You'll cap off somewhere and have to move to a different company to get a promotion.

Most of us know what this is, so I'll lay it out pretty clearly here - it's a pathway of skilled labor, not of people leadership. However there is a key difference with being an IC, and that is that you end up having a lot more options than you would in leadership.

Honestly, if you choose leadership, then you're focused on a core set of unchanging skills that you can apply everywhere that revolve around people, not so much the technology. The better you get and the more folks you can raise up, the more those skills are used for bigger impact.

As an IC, you are in fact focused on the technology and a set of skills that often are the core of what you do, but what you do with those skills can change, be refined, or completely alter depending on different paths you choose. Know that it's okay that you don't want to be a manager; there's no less honor in staying in an IC position. I know a lot of us are worried about the status drop from moving from leader to IC, but there's no shame in it. Being a leader requires skills, and honestly sometimes just certain personality types don't fit that bill.

So I want to treat this section a little differently, which is focused around pathways of IC's that sometimes aren't necessarily applicable to leadership, where those things I mentioned before, are basically in practice no matter where you go. Here we go!

The Standard Advancement

Most IC's in tech at least, follow a very standard path of leveling up basically. The key factor here though isn't that your skills grow and expand, but rather they compound based on what you can do with those skills.

So as a junior or regular engineers, you're really just focused on the day to day and doing project work. Nothing out of the ordinary. You give and get feedback, help people out, and grow your skillset. As a senior, you take on training, intaking and working on projects at a higher level, like creating a process for it or something, and you're usually a face people go to for questions and to get things done. Anything above that, you start getting into advanced automation, tooling, cross functional work, leading projects, etc.

It all just revolves around your skillset and how you can grow and apply it to the specialty you have chosen.

The Lead Advancement

Obviously as you advance in the ladder, usually after you get past a senior role, you get a second IC pathway available to you; the team or tech lead. This position changes the scope of what you do a little bit. It also usually involves getting paid a little more too.

So what changes? Instead of simply doing tech work, your focus shifts to add the responsibility of having stake in your team. While you may not be managing people per say, you become sort of the technical owner of everything your team does and produces. Leads often do work alongside the team AND the manager, without the responsibility of people. Things like gathering data for visibility, helping the team train and intake work, ensuring documentation, both internal and external is up to date. Stuff like that while also maintaining some sort of SME status within the team with your skillset.

The Movement Pathway

One of the greatest advantages of being an IC is your ability to move. The lower level you are, the more options you have, but the higher level you are, the more you're trusted to move. I know that sounds weird, but hear me out.

Being a level 1-2 means that you've proven you're really good at doing something. If you're a developer, you likely haven't had enough experience to be locked in a language or area, so moving between different products or languages is a simple thing to do. Same thing applies for SRE, support, Ops, and others.

Being above a senior level, you have proven you know a ton and are capable of a lot. Movement is still easy here because you've at this point got a solid set of skills underneath your specialty - between being cross functional, tech leading sort of, troubleshooting, and sheer experience, you qualify for things outside of your wheelhouse. People tend to trust you for it and you've probably learned how to quickly gain skills along the way.

I just want to talk about a key difference here to start out with; the move between each... again I've done the move both ways, so you get an inside view of what that looks like.

Going from IC to leader is honestly quite difficult. Because your role is ambiguous, often is your "training" as well. You're likely in a leader position now because you're a high performer, so people will expect you to figure it out. You'll get "leader training" and various HR driven resources, but again... they are all almost so vague and "up to you" type of things, that no one really helps you here. It takes a lot of asking "am I doing it right?" before you somehow understand that you're doing it right.

Going from a leader to an IC is a little different, not quite as difficult of a move, but the expectations people have of you change quite drastically. For some reason, folks seem to understand that some IC's aren't built to be managers because of skills, but everyone seems to think leaders are well equipped and over qualified for IC roles. So often you'll go back to an IC with a high title, and a lot of rusty skills to catch up on, putting you in the net negative for the first 6-8 months you return. However, the one advantage you do have, is you've seen behind the scenes... so you get the pressure and the why, which makes you extremely easy to work with most of the time.

Another key difference is the idea of having a team. So as an IC, you clearly have folks. If you have a team of 8 (including you), then there's plenty of people to ask questions, delegate to, pick up your slack, and help out, and let's not forget you have one, often more than one leader to help out too. You are covered.

Man... as a leader, it's lonely. You'll be a manager in a department... but none of you guys are doing the same things. You all have different struggles, different problems, different teams, and sometimes not even your department objectives align with everyone. Now, when you you reach directorship, you'll often have a very close team of leaders that work often together to achieve all sorts of goals and company initiatives. Even through the differences, everything you do at that level has a profound effect. As a front line leader though, you're often lost in the sauce in between your team and the team above you, and no real team for yourself.

The expectations for leaders are also wild my friend. I've held 3-5 different leader positions in my career, and each time, there's this crazy expectations of managers that they know everything, they create clarity, and they can deliver no matter what. As a leader, there is never a time that you're "caught up" and have nothing to do. You always feel like you're 3 weeks behind no matter what you do. You just have to learn to set boundaries. As an IC, those can be clearly set, and you're only expected to know what your specialty is known for, and occasionally more, but not like a leader.

Lastly of course the main difference is obviously the work, which I just talked about in the rest of the article. Leaders are all focused on people; relationships and conversations. IC's are focused on skilled labor + some extra.

I could just say "try it out and see" and end this section, but I won't. I'll at least give you a little bit of advice here. I am going to base it on where you are right now, as if you were going the other direction.

Current IC —> Leader

Are you really concerned with your team, specifically the people? Is your goal to make sure people are well taken care of, and that you can interact with the right folks? How well do you handle dealing with people in general, not just on the team, but others? Can you handle working under pressure? Are you capable of challenging your boss' direct orders? Can you set different expectations when they've already been given to you? If you answered no to a bunch of these... yeah it's probably not for you.

You have to consider where you could potentially end up here - where you never touch a technology, and your entire job is messages, meetings, and whatever ticket system you use, maybe Excel and Word. Your world revolves around talking to this person, delivering information to that person, connecting with this team, making sure cadences, team meetings, and 1x1's are happening, and providing updates, updating slides, and working with PM's, product owners, and other managers all day.

I know that you, as a high performer will tell yourself how good you are and you'll be an "in the pit" manager and lead alongside others, however... you won't be able to grow until you let that go. There will come a time where you'll have to delegate constantly instead of doing it yourself. You will have to work more on a process than the code/tasks. You'll only understand the new things from a high level and have no idea how to work on it. It's not a choice; it's inevitable.

If you're okay or excited about doing any of that, then by all means go for it. If you're not, or you're sitting here arguing with my words, then don't. Trust me. You can't "shape" the manager role... I've tried. Unless you want to sacrifice your whole life to it, and I've seen that happen to others.

Leader Now —> IC

Your first question is - how do you feel? Do you feel accomplished? Do you feel comfortable? Are you just bored? Are you drained at the end of everyday and feel like you've done absolutely nothing? Are the people killing you? Is your misery bleeding into your life?

I know that got a little dark, but it's the reality of it. If you feel like your life sucks, and your job feels like a prison sentence... then it's one of two things you need to consider; toxicity or role.

Being a leader means you're dealing with people all day... so if you're dealing with a culture where you don't fit in, or just terribly selfish people are all you talk to everyday, then of course you won't be happy. It might not be the role, because when you're an IC, you can avoid a lot of that and just dig into your day to day stuff, but as a leader, it's your entire job. Toxicity may be in the company you're a part of, and it's going to hit you hard. If this is the case, it may just be that you need to move companies to find a better fit for you without the toxic people or culture.

When it comes to the role, it's good to always consider it alongside the potential for toxic environments. If you have a toxic culture, you'll think about things like having to talk with certain people, you'll be afraid of management, or you'll give up on things knowing you'll have to deal with certain folks. Now if it's the role, that's where it differs a little bit; how comfortable are you being in a 1x1 with an engineer? Are you able to organize things effectively and does that give you excitement? Are you able to help solve issues for your folks with ease? Do you love or hate talking with people in general? How much prep and review do you have to do after every meeting? And also... how do you feel about anything that you do? Does it give you energy, or is it draining?

If you find that the people you work with are good people and it's a great culture, yet you feel like a trash can that got thrown around in a storm down the street and you're completely empty... then a move back to being an IC is probably where you need your future to head.

My friend, also consider what you want as well. You may be a "successful" manager, but are you really happy? If the answer is no, then imagine yourself as an IC again. Do you think you'd be happier? The way you feel is also important.

Know also there is a little bit of consequence to this. There's always going to be a few folks that are going to have a temporary negative view of you for a little bit when you move. You might lose a bonus or some benefits in the move as well. Also, you'll likely move back with a high title, like Staff or something, and while that's great, it puts you behind the ball. You'll HAVE to quickly gain up skills and catch up to your title. However, your well being and health in general is far more important than a few bucks and little extra work.

Fortunately the decision is up to you, and it's all about what you want and getting the best out of life. I know that the world is tough right now, and maybe you don't want to lose cash or benefits or whatever, but is it worth your death? Poor health, whether it be mental, physical, emotional, or spiritual, will bring you faster to death then you could ever imagine. You'll die of a heart attack before you're 50 just trying to make some money (I sincerely hope you don't, but these things are fast rising in the current generation).

What you want my friend is peace - and you won't get that chasing after money. You want to be a light in this world, and you can't do that if your light is out completely. It's not selfish to align yourself to your strengths and health; it's called proper treatment. We weren't put on this earth to sacrifice ourselves, we were put here to spread light and love.

I do want to bring up again here, this article isn't just a random dude analyzing things here; I've actually made both moves before, one I did multiple times. Honestly my history includes several lead positions, high level engineer positions, manager, supervisor, and even director. No, I am not a director now. In fact, I may be making a move farther away from that really soon.

I only bring that to let you know (I am not boasting about it), I am just hoping someone takes a lesson from all of my mistakes, pitfalls, and poor decisions and makes their own better decisions.

Thanks!