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It might even mean having someone transition down so they can eventually transition up. Anyone have a success story surrounding this they’d like to share? Aske

by dvtrn 5y ago

It might even mean having someone transition down so they can eventually transition up. Anyone have a success story surrounding this they’d like to share? Asked another way: has anyone ever stepped down from leadership and gone on to be an IC within the same company? I tried this at last job. Without pouring out all the details, the way the company handled it was poor, and shortly after I departed the company so did three other managers. One of which never wanted to be in a management or leadership position in the first place.

qqtt 5y ago
Anecdotally I've seen it quite a few times. In most cases, mentorship and the environment play a role in how successful you can be as an IC versus as a manager, and even within the same organization, the IC culture versus the Management culture can be drastically different and one or the other might not set you up for success. That said, in my experience when there is a mass exodus of the kind you talk about, the underlying symptom is some flavor of poor management and toxic culture. Doesn't matter if that organization incidentally happens to implement something which would otherwise qualify as "best practices of management" - in that environment it is simply putting lipstick on a pig.
redis_mlc 5y ago
It's common in consulting engineering companies (and likely legal and accounting firms) for a senior IC/partner/manager to rotate in as president for a perioud of time, then rotate out. I got to see the process up close at a previous company, and it was no big deal - "Oh, it's my turn to be president for a year. Gimme the extra laptop so I can leave one at home."
thanhhaimai 5y ago
Opinions are my own. I actually have seen the reverse. All the TLs I saw that stepped down to be ICs left their team shortly. It's obviously anecdotal, so I wouldn't generalize from that. On the otherhand, the TLs that switched to be a manager tend to stay in the teams much longer. Many of them openly said they don't enjoy managing, but that didn't seem to affect their decision to stay.
- enkid 5y ago
  Do you know why they were unhappy? I could imagine reasons why, but wouldn't want to poison the well, so to speak.
  - thanhhaimai 5y ago
    I know, but I wouldn't be able to give much specifics due to privacy reasons. I can say that the common theme is dissatisfactions with the velocity of making decisions, leading to conflicts/frustration. In a large org, ICs are at the mercy of the management for velocity. When you step down from the TL position, you may feel pretty frustrated that your impact is now tied to some one else's (sometimes slow) decision. This feeling is already common between the normal ICs, but for TLs-turned-ICs, I think they experienced it much worse. All the people I knew burned out, complained about management, and left for another team or another company.
myself248 5y ago
acronym: IC?
- GoatOfAplomb 5y ago
  Individual contributor- not a tech lead or manager.
l8rpeace 5y ago
I was an IC program manager. I was asked to manage program managers. I stepped back to become an IC within a year. I did this because my team was immediately starved for engineering resources upon my appointment, I was asked to continue my IC product management responsibilities while managing the team, and I kept getting PMs that were the problem children of the group. I went on to run product management for tooling and ops processes around that tooling in the post-manager PM role. I never looked back. However, I got the bug so bad I left to start my own company, so now I manage everyone?
- jameshush 5y ago
  You probably already know this, but in case anyone else hasn't had this experience, learn from my mistake and think of it as "so now I manage these 4-5 leaders" instead of "so now I manage everyone". I thought this was the same thing, but I learned the hard way there's a reason middle managers exist :)

by dvtrn 5y ago

qqtt 5y ago

Anecdotally I've seen it quite a few times. In most cases, mentorship and the environment play a role in how successful you can be as an IC versus as a manager, and even within the same organization, the IC culture versus the Management culture can be drastically different and one or the other might not set you up for success. That said, in my experience when there is a mass exodus of the kind you talk about, the underlying symptom is some flavor of poor management and toxic culture. Doesn't matter if that organization incidentally happens to implement something which would otherwise qualify as "best practices of management" - in that environment it is simply putting lipstick on a pig.

redis_mlc 5y ago

It's common in consulting engineering companies (and likely legal and accounting firms) for a senior IC/partner/manager to rotate in as president for a perioud of time, then rotate out. I got to see the process up close at a previous company, and it was no big deal - "Oh, it's my turn to be president for a year. Gimme the extra laptop so I can leave one at home."

thanhhaimai 5y ago

Opinions are my own. I actually have seen the reverse. All the TLs I saw that stepped down to be ICs left their team shortly. It's obviously anecdotal, so I wouldn't generalize from that. On the otherhand, the TLs that switched to be a manager tend to stay in the teams much longer. Many of them openly said they don't enjoy managing, but that didn't seem to affect their decision to stay.

enkid 5y ago
Do you know why they were unhappy? I could imagine reasons why, but wouldn't want to poison the well, so to speak.
- thanhhaimai 5y ago
  I know, but I wouldn't be able to give much specifics due to privacy reasons. I can say that the common theme is dissatisfactions with the velocity of making decisions, leading to conflicts/frustration. In a large org, ICs are at the mercy of the management for velocity. When you step down from the TL position, you may feel pretty frustrated that your impact is now tied to some one else's (sometimes slow) decision. This feeling is already common between the normal ICs, but for TLs-turned-ICs, I think they experienced it much worse. All the people I knew burned out, complained about management, and left for another team or another company.

myself248 5y ago

acronym: IC?

GoatOfAplomb 5y ago
Individual contributor- not a tech lead or manager.

l8rpeace 5y ago

I was an IC program manager. I was asked to manage program managers. I stepped back to become an IC within a year. I did this because my team was immediately starved for engineering resources upon my appointment, I was asked to continue my IC product management responsibilities while managing the team, and I kept getting PMs that were the problem children of the group. I went on to run product management for tooling and ops processes around that tooling in the post-manager PM role. I never looked back. However, I got the bug so bad I left to start my own company, so now I manage everyone?

jameshush 5y ago
You probably already know this, but in case anyone else hasn't had this experience, learn from my mistake and think of it as "so now I manage these 4-5 leaders" instead of "so now I manage everyone". I thought this was the same thing, but I learned the hard way there's a reason middle managers exist :)