Ask HN: Getting back into an IC role as a manager | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Getting back into an IC role as a manager

36 pointsycquestion24 comments

I've been in senior manager and director roles for the last 7 years. I miss coding at work and have enjoyed the coding I've been doing outside of work a lot more than anything substantial I've done as a manager. However, I also increasingly feel that my concrete tech chops are getting outdated or are just fading away. I used to be an excellent full-stack Rails engineer in full control of anything from AWS infrastructure to DB, Rails app server and front end. I am increasingly tempted to take a substantial, temporary pay cut moving back into an IC role. However, that would need to be at a different company, since I have zero interest working on anything my current employer has.

Has anyone made this jump back into an IC role? How did you find a role? What did you do to get the role?

Edit: Most importantly: Would you do it again?

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You may consider switching to an architect track. An architect is still considered an IC in that one does not _manage_ people. But one still is a leader and a "multiplier" of value, because the designs enable multiple engineers to build large solutions. Architects solve technical problems, and often are expected to code the initial or the most important parts of their solutions. This role is sometimes called "staff engineer" or "principal engineer".

I jumped from senior management track to architect track. Moreover, I consciously used the stint in management as a "trampoline" to a senior architect position, which helped both politically and in terms of the crucial soft /business skills I had acquired. This may or may not be a viable path, depending on a company.

How does a Senior manager maintain the technical skills to be an architect. I guess companies come in all shapes

I managed to at a BigTech, it involved (1) a lot of hours, (2) seeing everything built from the ground up and thus knowing how it all fit together (the real short-cut way to appear 10x), and (3) remaining very hands-on with design at times, perhaps selfishly, to the chagrin of the engineers. Lost 90% of my ability/will to code, but my architecture ability remained exemplary compared to the IC engineers.

OP misses coding and often architects do very little coding.

An architect position will have OP spending most of their time in meetings rather than coding. It is also a funny position because your manager can literally get you to do anything. It's not really a fully defined role.

I'm not really sure. The really good principal engineers that I've worked with were incredibly technical and churned out a lot of code while also sitting thru a lot of meetings. I've never seen anyone in that role who came from being a manager

Architect roles are great if they give you architectural problems to solve. It wouldn't be so great if it's just a manager without managers' power.

I switched from managing a team of 20ish to becoming a Solutions Engineer (other job titles are Sales Engineer, Solutions Architect).

It's pretty common to see ex-managers in this role because you still need to deal with people, but it's generally a much less stressful job than being a manager. You never need to lay anyone off, and you don't have to worry about others dropping the ball as much.

The way I found the role was through a hacker news job posting, however, my strategy was to focus on jobs where my industry, non-technical experience would be helpful. In this situation, I used to manage a team of engineers for an online virtual events company, so I applied for a job where I'd be helping the sales team sell to other online virtual events companies. Because I used to be the customer (as the manager), I had a lot of emotional contexts that someone who hadn't worked in that industry before didn't have.

I got pretty much the same pay too. There will always be a shortage of engineers who are happy to talk on the phone with a customer.

I followed the same trajectory. I was managing quite big teams and went to Liaison/Solutions Engineer. I had experience with troubleshooting projects and customer relationships (mainly due to stuff getting escalated to me). A couple of ex-colleagues at my new employer supported my application; specifically that I had continued to demonstrate enthusiasm for some hands-on skills whilst in management.

Parent is right. You don't need to lay people off. Getting stuff done in my new role is down to establishing credibility and knowing how teams and organisations work.

I did it for a while. Held CTO/VPE for 6 years and took an IC role for 2 years in order to learn the latest tech and remember what it’s like to code again.

It was fun! I was a “10x” contributor even though I was a bit rusty at the code part at first.

I knew how to interpret specs, read user and stakeholder minds, ask for help in the right way, and communicate up and down.

I got the role at a series B startup by having a senior dev there vouch for me. I didn’t do a technical interview. I told them they could just fire me after 90 days if they didn’t like the results.

I've done this. It was the right decision for me and I have no regrets. However, it is a personal decision and I'm not going to try to convince you one way or another. Rather, I'll share two posts below by Charity Majors which helped me to come to a decision (I'm surprised they haven't featured in this thread yet!). They're well thought out and it helped me to consider all of the impacts that the decision will have.

The engineer-manager pendulum: https://charity.wtf/2017/05/11/the-engineer-manager-pendulum...

Questionable advice - is there a path back from CTO to engineer? https://charity.wtf/2022/07/29/questionable-advice-is-there-...

I have made the transition from a engineering manager to IC last year. I had spent 3 years as a EM and that was long enough to lose significant amount of day to day knowledge around engineering. I did 3 months of Leetcode and I got a role a Senior Software Engineer.

Would I do it again, no unless it was within my current company. Jumping to another company after not being hands on for a few years was very difficult. Especially when it came to the system design questions.

Edit: Now that I've made the transition, its great. It was a slow start with the coding aspects. The management background helps a lot for interactions with my peers and junior developers. My peers already think I should be at least the next level in the IC track, but that is probably because I take on responsibilities outside my immediate area.

I switched as a PM to a senior swe+team lead type role. I wanted to try it out and was able to negotiate my way into the job since the project itself was an MVP. Personally, I ended up not liking it to much because I was one of the more experienced and thus was helping out 4 lesser exp. eng. After the role, I was offered a Solutions Engineer/Technical Advisor like role.

Upon reflection, if you really miss coding I'd recommend finding something part-time or a Solutions Engineer role.

Do you miss coding or actually working as an IC? There are plenty of startups where director’s role requires hands on IC work, usually at the early stage (seed or pre-seed).

I did this from more or less managerial role to IC. It was hard initially, i.e. but I got used to it. The most helpful thing was that I continued coding in my free time, so there was some re-learning curve, but it wasn't too steep.

The key here is finding a company which values IC as much as manager which unfortunately isn't true for every company.

For inspiration: https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/mitchell-s-new-role-at-hashic...

Best to join an early stage startup as a technical co-founder or CTO. You get best of both worlds where you get to bootstrap an app and then grow the team.

I’ve been a startup ceo for a year. Absolutely do not like this role and looking for a way to exit gracefully. Appreciate the feeling.

I don't understand the IC role at all. How one transition to that after being a member of a very specific team? Does that mean they are like a bee flying from one flower to the next?

IC means that you are not managing anybody. So basically every developer who doesn’t have any reports is IC.

What a confusing term for such a simple concept, I assume no engineer manages anybody unless they have lead or something similar in their title.

IC stands for Individual Contributor, i.e. non-management positions. It's pretty common in the industry.

I know it's standard, but I misunderstood it since forever :)

I don't think it's used in Europe, is it?

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