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I've moved from some senior exec roles (for years), back to being an IC. I had other stuff going on in life and overall, something had to give. I never lost the

I've moved from some senior exec roles (for years), back to being an IC. I had other stuff going on in life and overall, something had to give. I never lost the love for coding, and apart from the massive drop in salary I'm much happier. I have to be careful to stay in my lane sometimes. I have a lot more experience than the leadership I report through, so I generally just leave them to it, and sometimes offer the odd little nudge.

vgeek 5y ago
I've switched from digital marketing manager type roles with direct reports to an IC dev role at a much smaller organization at that. The pace is _much_ slower with lower expectations, and people don't seem as receptive to your feedback as an IC (even when giving background of prior experiences, people still seem to anchor your skills to only your current title) so I've learned to stay in the very narrow dev lane and play the stooge role while taking the necessary steps to keep my skills relevant. It is obviously hugely dependent on the organization's culture, but I've encountered more politics as an IC dev than any management role. The shift to IC is much more how can you make a low-mid manager seem like what obviously should be done is their brilliant, novel idea in addition to actually implementing the tasks at hand-- so overall productivity of the group is exponentially lower.