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I want my career path as a developer to never be anything but individual contributor. I like teaching newer Devs but I don't want to manage them. Maybe I'm bein

I want my career path as a developer to never be anything but individual contributor. I like teaching newer Devs but I don't want to manage them. Maybe I'm being naive?

serpix 4y ago
my advice is to keep doors open. You will age and your needs and expectations may change. You can always start a transition to take on more managerial duties while doing individual contribution.
engineer_22 4y ago
That's called "technical track"
penjelly 4y ago
same, im not interested in managing people for at least next 5-10 years.
ramesh31 4y ago
>I want my career path as a developer to never be anything but individual contributor. I like teaching newer Devs but I don't want to manage them. Maybe I'm being naive? You can do this, but you will have to accept the plateau. There's really nowhere to go beyond Staff/L6, unless you're some super genius full of brilliant ideas or luck into being involved in a game changing product launch. Everything beyond that becomes politics.
- WkndTriathlete 4y ago
  Not all companies have that plateau.
- eklitzke 4y ago
  The same applies to being a manager though. You're not going to get promoted forever in any role, at some point you'll hit a terminal level, whether that's in an IC track or a management track. And it's not a problem as long as you find your work fulfilling.
  - ramesh31 4y ago
    >The same applies to being a manager though. It depends. If you're able to side-step the middle manager doldrums to Director/VP, and you know how to play the game, the sky's the limit. But IC's are pretty hard capped at L6 short of being involved in the creation of a new business.
  - tomtheelder 4y ago
    Well I guess the difference is that the top of the technical leadership track is ostensibly CTO, which is a “higher” role than you’d typically see on the IC side. That said I totally agree with you overall and think the argument you are responding to is a little silly. You can have an absolutely fantastic career staying IC forever. The fact that you might cap out at “staff/principal/whatever engineer,” a hugely influential and generally very well paid role, should not be viewed as a downside to that track.
    - ratorx 4y ago
      Well, in terms of the org chart, you’ll always be higher at an equivalent point in the management track compared to the IC track (starting from team lead, who will report to the team manager), but that’s not necessarily mean there’s not that as room for growth. Even the CTO can have incredibly senior engineers reporting to them as a consultant of sorts. Sure, the probability of arriving at that role is low, but then so is the probability of becoming CTO.
  - tannhaeuser 4y ago
    aka the Peter principle
- rconti 4y ago
  There's nothing wrong with that because you might not even want to go up that high.
- the_af 4y ago
  Every role has a plateau at any given company. More importantly, why would one always want to "go beyond" any specific role, assuming the pay is good?
irrational 4y ago
I've been working professionally for 22 years and am still an individual contributor. I've refused all attempts to move me into any kind of lead/manager position.
andrewxdiamond 4y ago
Amazon has a whole tree of long tenured engineers that are strictly ICs. Principle engineers are still ICs
- turdprincess 4y ago
  The principal engineer role usually comes with expected impact on a big organization or even the whole company. Having that kind of impact is impossible as an “IC” in the traditional sense. Unless you are in some very cutting edge area, or get very lucky, your principal role will involve a big dose of the same leadership and management tasks that a manager or director would have.
  - fknorangesite 4y ago
    > The principal engineer role usually comes with expected impact on a big organization or even the whole company. Yes, but you're not managing people. It's a lot of collaboration and leadership, certainly, but not doing any of the HR-adjacent bureaucracy that comes with being management.
  - r00fus 4y ago
    So what is your vision of IC "in the traditional sense"? Most senior engineers at organizations require a significant amount of coordination and people-skills. If you're not managing a team, you're definitely managing the relationship with your manager and coworkers/project teammates.
    - turdprincess 4y ago
      My vision for a "traditional" IC is someone who sits in front of a computer and writes computer programs. This kind of role ends at senior, or if you are lucky, staff. A principal engineer is much more likely to be in a meeting heavy environment, coordinating with many teams and driving alignment towards some vision. While this is not strictly managerial work, at least to me, it seems to fall much closer to "senior manager" than "software engineer". Thats totally fine for folks who thrive in this kind of role. However, it does take away the ability to grow your career if you want to keep developing software. So for example, if you program for 20 years, and keep improving during this time, you would expect to be rewarded with some career progression for the progress you've made in years 10 - 20. But as it stands, these days, if you run into someone who has been programming for 20 years, you can assume their career has mostly stagnated, and might even count them off as a low performer because they failed to grow. So it's almost a self fulfilling prophecy - staying a "true" IC has no growth, and therefore there is an incentive to just sit back and stop growing.
stronglikedan 4y ago
You're only naive in thinking that you will never want to be anything else.
eklitzke 4y ago
This is easy to do and not looked down upon at FAANGs, but harder to do at smaller companies.
lifeinthevoid 4y ago
It's kind of satisfying to take care of people and help them develop.
flatline 4y ago
Some people spend their whole careers like this, there is nothing wrong with it. I personally avoided management for years, until I was offered a lead role over a team of roughly 4 people in Feb 2020. I had been working on the product for years and knew all the ins and outs and had a vision for its future. Cue the pandemic and everyone going remote - and the project ballooning to 25 people across three organizations. I absolutely thrived. I realized I’d done everything coding wise that I was really interested in, and that job had grown stale. I have matured, and found I have more social skills than in my 20s and early 30s. I found that not everyone could or would be interested in driving things where they needed to go to successfully ship a product. You may someday surprise yourself at how your interests and capabilities evolve.
- sfpotter 4y ago
  Hell yeah. This is a great response. Lots of positivity and challenging the usual HN tropes! More of this please.
stcroixx 4y ago
I've been in a role like this for many years in a small company. I doubt it would really work in a rigid FAANG environment with formalities like levels and performance reviews and all that - it would get too political and competitive. Other managers will always try to change your mind on this. When layoffs come around, they usually are more likely to get laid off and their tech skills are now stale and they have to rely on their 'network' to get another management job if they're lucky. Not a position I want to put myself in.
- ratorx 4y ago
  This is a pretty well-defined role in FAANG. Usually the promotion criteria to become more senior as an IC will require demonstrating mentorship. Separately, there is also the Tech Lead track, where you don’t get reports, but rather final say over an increasingly larger area of influence and drive cross-team/org projects.
giantg2 4y ago
I just wish I had a career path at all.
FlyingSnake 4y ago
Staff Engineer¹ is the path for you my friend. If you don't want to manage people, focus on creating maximum impact on your project. I think the term IC is a misnomer and is detrimental to our field. Afterall the code you write, the designs you make etc are part of the larger puzzle which completes the project. No work you do is in isolation. https://staffeng.com/ https://staffeng.com/
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
anthomtb 4y ago
How far along on that career path are you? You may find that teaching newer developers is not all that different from formally managing them. As for a technical track, read the stories on staffeng.com. And read between the lines when you’re viewing them. There are plenty of folks with technical track titles who spend most of their working hours in meetings of questionable value. And you will definitely find folks with management track titles that spend more time doing hands on work than their peers with technical track titles. The ugly option you can try is good old-fashioned sandbagging. Knock out every technical assignment in record time, or quality, or whatever seems to be your leads KPI. Then tank any assignment which seems remotely conducive to management. Bonus points for explicitly indicating a desire to move into management. Your own leadership will think you are so miscalibrated as to believe they are doing everyone a favor by keeping you off the management track. Edit: I realize you did not explicitly ask how to stay off the management track. Consider the last paragraph as just some idle, slightly sociopathic musing.

I want my career path as a developer to never be anything but individual contributor. I like teaching newer Devs but I don't want to manage them. Maybe I'm being naive?

serpix 4y ago

my advice is to keep doors open. You will age and your needs and expectations may change. You can always start a transition to take on more managerial duties while doing individual contribution.

engineer_22 4y ago

That's called "technical track"

penjelly 4y ago

same, im not interested in managing people for at least next 5-10 years.

ramesh31 4y ago

>I want my career path as a developer to never be anything but individual contributor. I like teaching newer Devs but I don't want to manage them. Maybe I'm being naive? You can do this, but you will have to accept the plateau. There's really nowhere to go beyond Staff/L6, unless you're some super genius full of brilliant ideas or luck into being involved in a game changing product launch. Everything beyond that becomes politics.

WkndTriathlete 4y ago
Not all companies have that plateau.
eklitzke 4y ago
The same applies to being a manager though. You're not going to get promoted forever in any role, at some point you'll hit a terminal level, whether that's in an IC track or a management track. And it's not a problem as long as you find your work fulfilling.
- ramesh31 4y ago
  >The same applies to being a manager though. It depends. If you're able to side-step the middle manager doldrums to Director/VP, and you know how to play the game, the sky's the limit. But IC's are pretty hard capped at L6 short of being involved in the creation of a new business.
- tomtheelder 4y ago
  Well I guess the difference is that the top of the technical leadership track is ostensibly CTO, which is a “higher” role than you’d typically see on the IC side. That said I totally agree with you overall and think the argument you are responding to is a little silly. You can have an absolutely fantastic career staying IC forever. The fact that you might cap out at “staff/principal/whatever engineer,” a hugely influential and generally very well paid role, should not be viewed as a downside to that track.
  - ratorx 4y ago
    Well, in terms of the org chart, you’ll always be higher at an equivalent point in the management track compared to the IC track (starting from team lead, who will report to the team manager), but that’s not necessarily mean there’s not that as room for growth. Even the CTO can have incredibly senior engineers reporting to them as a consultant of sorts. Sure, the probability of arriving at that role is low, but then so is the probability of becoming CTO.
- tannhaeuser 4y ago
  aka the Peter principle
rconti 4y ago
There's nothing wrong with that because you might not even want to go up that high.
the_af 4y ago
Every role has a plateau at any given company. More importantly, why would one always want to "go beyond" any specific role, assuming the pay is good?

irrational 4y ago

I've been working professionally for 22 years and am still an individual contributor. I've refused all attempts to move me into any kind of lead/manager position.

andrewxdiamond 4y ago

Amazon has a whole tree of long tenured engineers that are strictly ICs. Principle engineers are still ICs

turdprincess 4y ago
The principal engineer role usually comes with expected impact on a big organization or even the whole company. Having that kind of impact is impossible as an “IC” in the traditional sense. Unless you are in some very cutting edge area, or get very lucky, your principal role will involve a big dose of the same leadership and management tasks that a manager or director would have.
- fknorangesite 4y ago
  > The principal engineer role usually comes with expected impact on a big organization or even the whole company. Yes, but you're not managing people. It's a lot of collaboration and leadership, certainly, but not doing any of the HR-adjacent bureaucracy that comes with being management.
- r00fus 4y ago
  So what is your vision of IC "in the traditional sense"? Most senior engineers at organizations require a significant amount of coordination and people-skills. If you're not managing a team, you're definitely managing the relationship with your manager and coworkers/project teammates.
  - turdprincess 4y ago
    My vision for a "traditional" IC is someone who sits in front of a computer and writes computer programs. This kind of role ends at senior, or if you are lucky, staff. A principal engineer is much more likely to be in a meeting heavy environment, coordinating with many teams and driving alignment towards some vision. While this is not strictly managerial work, at least to me, it seems to fall much closer to "senior manager" than "software engineer". Thats totally fine for folks who thrive in this kind of role. However, it does take away the ability to grow your career if you want to keep developing software. So for example, if you program for 20 years, and keep improving during this time, you would expect to be rewarded with some career progression for the progress you've made in years 10 - 20. But as it stands, these days, if you run into someone who has been programming for 20 years, you can assume their career has mostly stagnated, and might even count them off as a low performer because they failed to grow. So it's almost a self fulfilling prophecy - staying a "true" IC has no growth, and therefore there is an incentive to just sit back and stop growing.

stronglikedan 4y ago

You're only naive in thinking that you will never want to be anything else.

eklitzke 4y ago

This is easy to do and not looked down upon at FAANGs, but harder to do at smaller companies.

lifeinthevoid 4y ago

It's kind of satisfying to take care of people and help them develop.

flatline 4y ago

Some people spend their whole careers like this, there is nothing wrong with it. I personally avoided management for years, until I was offered a lead role over a team of roughly 4 people in Feb 2020. I had been working on the product for years and knew all the ins and outs and had a vision for its future. Cue the pandemic and everyone going remote - and the project ballooning to 25 people across three organizations. I absolutely thrived. I realized I’d done everything coding wise that I was really interested in, and that job had grown stale. I have matured, and found I have more social skills than in my 20s and early 30s. I found that not everyone could or would be interested in driving things where they needed to go to successfully ship a product. You may someday surprise yourself at how your interests and capabilities evolve.

sfpotter 4y ago
Hell yeah. This is a great response. Lots of positivity and challenging the usual HN tropes! More of this please.

stcroixx 4y ago

I've been in a role like this for many years in a small company. I doubt it would really work in a rigid FAANG environment with formalities like levels and performance reviews and all that - it would get too political and competitive. Other managers will always try to change your mind on this. When layoffs come around, they usually are more likely to get laid off and their tech skills are now stale and they have to rely on their 'network' to get another management job if they're lucky. Not a position I want to put myself in.

ratorx 4y ago
This is a pretty well-defined role in FAANG. Usually the promotion criteria to become more senior as an IC will require demonstrating mentorship. Separately, there is also the Tech Lead track, where you don’t get reports, but rather final say over an increasingly larger area of influence and drive cross-team/org projects.

giantg2 4y ago

I just wish I had a career path at all.

FlyingSnake 4y ago

Staff Engineer¹ is the path for you my friend. If you don't want to manage people, focus on creating maximum impact on your project. I think the term IC is a misnomer and is detrimental to our field. Afterall the code you write, the designs you make etc are part of the larger puzzle which completes the project. No work you do is in isolation. https://staffeng.com/ https://staffeng.com/

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

anthomtb 4y ago

How far along on that career path are you? You may find that teaching newer developers is not all that different from formally managing them. As for a technical track, read the stories on staffeng.com. And read between the lines when you’re viewing them. There are plenty of folks with technical track titles who spend most of their working hours in meetings of questionable value. And you will definitely find folks with management track titles that spend more time doing hands on work than their peers with technical track titles. The ugly option you can try is good old-fashioned sandbagging. Knock out every technical assignment in record time, or quality, or whatever seems to be your leads KPI. Then tank any assignment which seems remotely conducive to management. Bonus points for explicitly indicating a desire to move into management. Your own leadership will think you are so miscalibrated as to believe they are doing everyone a favor by keeping you off the management track. Edit: I realize you did not explicitly ask how to stay off the management track. Consider the last paragraph as just some idle, slightly sociopathic musing.