Does your company offer a technical and non-technical path?
Have you decided which track you will be on? If so, which did you choose and why?
Do people switch back and forth between tracks?
My company does not, but it's a small company...about 200-300 employees, and about 30 of us are engineers. All of the engineers are technical, though the managers deal more with the commercial and people management side of the equation.
In my experience at other places I've worked, people do not switch back and forth between technical and non-technical. Once you start down a path, you're pretty much pigeon-holed.
Personally, I prefer to be technical. That's why I went into engineering - because I enjoy the technical. I have no interest in the commercial or sales side of the business.
Yes, my company has both tracks. I've seen people go from technical to managerial but not back within my company. I'm actually doing this myself. I think it's important for managers to have technical experience, or else it's hard to relate to and understand the work their group is doing. Anyway, I kind of fell into more leadership/organizational responsibilities after my manager left and his manager asked me if I'd considered stepping up.
Answering for previous jobs (a few months ago I switched to a very small company and it's pretty flat and informal).
Yes, two tracks. The first step on management track is often to do some management and some technical. Yes, I've seen people switch back and forth both ways. It seems to really depend on the person as to which one they like, but MOST engineers I know really hate to give up the technical side completely and either want to stay in those low level management positions where they can do both or they end up over-involving themselves in technical work and working all the time to keep up.
Personally, I have yet to feel the desire to move toward management. I like engineering too much.
Our company offers and advertises both tracks. Some have successfully gone back technical after management. But typically the direction decision is made at first line supervisor level, not manager.
Post by hbomdiggity on Oct 21, 2014 20:30:44 GMT -5
In my experience (and H since he is still in engineering) the technical track is a dead end road. It's fine if that's what you really enjoy, and frankly not all engineers make good managers. But management is the only way up, if that's the goal.
I'm in engineering at a very large company and just became a first line manager 3 weeks ago. My company has a matrix organizational structure, so as a manager, I have a team of engineers in the same discipline as me, but everyone is assigned to various programs for their technical work. For moving "up the ladder", we have many individuals who stay technical their whole careers (which does cap out, but it's still pretty high) and many who move towards program or technical capability leadership roles. Being just a "people manager" is not really a career track BUT almost everyone who is in a program or technical leadership role did a few years as a first line manager at some point. It's part of being a well-rounded leader within the organization.
As far as returning to a technical role... Our first line managers only manage for ~30% of their time (and have 14-20 direct reports). The rest of the time is spent being a technical contributor to a program, so it's much easier to switch back.
Does your company offer a technical and non-technical path?
Have you decided which track you will be on? If so, which did you choose and why?
Do people switch back and forth between tracks?
Most software companies have a career path for people who don't want to become managers. They're responsible for mentoring, seeing technical direction across a broader team, but not people management. My current company just make things up as far as titles, which I see as a sign of poor organization. My STB new job is more formal about roles. There are managers and then there are principals.
I'm going to become a manager eventually. A good principal developer is REALLY REALLY AWESOME but the median principal just sits around and pontificates. The median manager I've worked with is actually useful.
In my field switching back and forth is fairly common. Or rather in your thirties it's common as you figure out what you want to do.
At my STB new job there is a "Dev Lead" position for technical people who want to manage. But it's getting phased out. I've basically had this position and it doesn't work. At the times that are hard, you need to spend 100% of your time managing and doing technical things. Recruiting says that instead of Dev Leads, managers of small teams will have some small non-critical IC responsibilities.
ETA I forgot to mention compensation. The ICs are paid a little less but still paid very well, until you get higher in management and then the managers make big money.
A scary thing is this first level of management would have 14 direct reports, plus 5 contractors. To me that is crazy cakes but I guess that's just the company. He has already been in a project lead role for a while so he is familiar with reviewing and assigning the work of others but not administrative duties.
Without project work, that's a common amount of direct reports in my industry (pharmaceuticals)
Any first manager job is tough, but you never get those skills unless you try:)
Wow, I've never had a manager with that many direct reports. I think the most was 10-12 at a time and that was temporary while they brought someone else up. More typical for both companies was 6ish direct reports. But again, these people were doing technical work in some capacity as well (often more architect/project management type work but still very technical - all of them could/would write code or run tests at least occasionally).
Then again my husband's company is very different. They are a remote site of 40ish people of a very large corporation and they have one people-manager for EVERYONE. He does only that, and then they have several project managers and tech leads and the like. Especially given the company, that sounds like a pretty awful job to me!