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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 staff of my very own. I had acquired sturdy efficiency rankings and earned belief amongst my colleagues and the management staff, and the group’s headcount was persistently growing every year.
That is the usual origin story for engineers who transition to administration. However the expertise required to succeed as an engineer and those a supervisor has to have are considerably totally different. Sturdy engineers succeed by means of rigorous analytical capability and deep work. Sturdy managers (whose work is decidedly un-analytical!) inspire and develop folks’s careers, whereas additionally being ready to leap into points at a second’s discover.
The best motivation to change into a supervisor is easy: You care about folks. Administration is inherently a people-oriented job, which implies managers ought to develop their reviews by means of 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 power to scale impression, however that shouldn’t be the first motive.
A standard, but misguided, motive to modify to administration is to earn extra money. At the least inside Huge 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 quite than folks.
Nonetheless, there’s nuance right here that’s value 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 staff.
Alternatively, a person contributor on the director degree should produce output that has an identical scale of impression to what the 50 engineers shipped. As you’ll be able to think about, that is a lot tougher. 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 below them. This course of can occur by means of re-orgs or worker departures, not essentially by means of 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 information. At an organization like Meta or Google, there are much more VP-level managers than there are IC engineers of the equal degree.
In the long run, subsequently, managers do earn extra money than particular person contributors. This isn’t essentially incorrect, however you need to replicate in your incentives and decide what is going to make you fulfilled past the cash.
I ended up saying sure to the administration alternative I used to be supplied, and I’m very glad I did. Like several job, there have been components that I beloved and components that I didn’t, and I ended up switching again to the IC ladder inside a yr.
—Rahul
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