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Throughout my first two years working at Meta, I used to be a person contributor (IC) engineer. Then, after an encouraging assessment, my supervisor requested if I’d begin managing a crew of my very own. I had obtained robust efficiency scores and earned belief amongst my colleagues and the management crew, and the group’s headcount was constantly growing annually.
That is the usual origin story for engineers who transition to administration. However the abilities required to succeed as an engineer and those a supervisor has to have are considerably completely different. Sturdy engineers succeed via rigorous analytical skill and deep work. Sturdy managers (whose work is decidedly un-analytical!) encourage and develop folks’s careers, whereas additionally being ready to leap into points at a second’s discover.
The perfect motivation to grow to be a supervisor is straightforward: You care about folks. Administration is inherently a people-oriented job, which suggests managers ought to develop their experiences via optimistic and constructive suggestions. A very good supervisor cares about discovering every individual’s zone of genius after which assigning work that finest matches that engineer’s profile. The byproduct of that is the flexibility to scale impression, however that shouldn’t be the first motive.
A typical, but misguided, cause to change to administration is to earn more cash. At the very least inside Large Tech firms, managers and ICs on the similar degree are paid the identical quantity. In reality, some firms intentionally pay their managers much less, merely to discourage mercenary engineers who’re optimizing for compensation slightly than folks.
Nonetheless, there may be nuance right here that’s price calling out. At extra senior ranges, managers are promoted at quicker charges in comparison with ICs. A supervisor’s impression is basically derived from their affect in an org, which incorporates the variety of folks of their reporting chain. A director with 50 engineers of their org can successfully “declare credit score” for the folks on their crew.
Alternatively, a person contributor on the director degree should produce output that has an analogous scale of impression to what the 50 engineers shipped. As you possibly can think about, that is a lot more durable. IC promotions at these ranges require a degree of technical brilliance that’s tough to reliably reproduce.
Managers typically get promoted as they accumulate extra folks beneath them. This course of can occur via re-orgs or worker departures, not essentially via the distinctive contributions of the supervisor. The result’s that managers who stick round lengthy sufficient will naturally develop their careers. Empirically, that is apparent within the knowledge. At an organization like Meta or Google, there are way more VP-level managers than there are IC engineers of the equal degree.
In the long run, due to this fact, managers do earn more cash than particular person contributors. This isn’t essentially unsuitable, however you need to replicate in your incentives and decide what’s going to make you fulfilled past the cash.
I ended up saying sure to the administration alternative I used to be provided, and I’m very glad I did. Like all job, there have been elements that I beloved and elements that I didn’t, and I ended up switching again to the IC ladder inside a yr.
—Rahul
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