Engineers & Engineering Managers

Working primarily in the Technology sector, we often have to help companies tackle the ongoing debate about engineers career paths and what options they have if they don't want to move into management.

This page is a summary of our views and the basic premises of the advice we give.

Ensure your Career Framework doesn't fall into the "One Way Street" trap

Firstly, in the modern business world, especially in professions and areas of specialism such as Software Engineering, management should no longer be seen as an alternative to progressing as an engineer, or that technologists have to choose to move away from their technical focus if they want to advance in their careers.

Yes, ideally managers in technical teams have engineering credibility, so have been an engineer.
Yes, there is benefit in deliberately embracing both senior technologist roles and manager roles in your career.
But... they are different roles and don't need to be taken on at the same time.
Moving into management doesn't have to be a one-way trip.
And whilst it may be a promotion, it may also be a sideways move from a very senior technical role.
You don't always earn more money.

The reality is that whether a manager or a senior technologist, you should be amplifying the performance of those around you, helping those around you to become something greater than the sum of their parts. Some of the tools at your disposal will be different, but some of your skills will be very similar.

If you are moving from a role that is essentially an IC (Individual Contributor) to a Management role where you can have greater influence and make more of an impact, then it is a promotion and it will command more money.

And in most organisations, it's a reality that the more senior you get, the fewer positions there are for you to move up, into. There may be more management roles than Engineering roles...but there should be senior technical roles that have large responsibilities, just not people management. The role may be titled "manager" but it may be managing other resources and complex situations. Should this be considered as a move into management?

Employees want a manager that is genuinely interested in supporting and developing them, helping to create a great working environment and nurturing their career... and have time to do so. In the technical world, people also want a manager that can guide them and genuinely appreciate their skills and competencies.

A senior technologist wants to have career advancement, a role that is challenging, interesting, and not a one-way street, they need to be able to keep their technical skills relevant while retaining options for the direction they want to move in. A career should be long and varied and become more enjoyable over time, not less so.

To achieve this, technologists need to be able to build their technical skills, chose to move into a management role for a period of time, and swap back to having a technical focus.

It makes good business sense...Technologists and technical leaders need both skill sets to reach their full potential, and doing so makes them better technologists and better leaders.

Career paths and frameworks need to reinforce these points, ensuring that they don't suggest someone has to choose to be one or the other. However, they must choose one at a time. You cannot be both a deep technologist and a manager at the same time. You need to deliberately step between these roles because the fundamental way work is done is different in each role:

Being a good engineer involves blocking out interruptions, focussing on learning and solving hard problems
Being a good manager involves being available to your team and interruptible, even being interrupt-driven

In order to provide good support and to have engineering credibility, the framework must focus on the engineering track first – build strong and deep technical skills. You don’t have to be the best engineer, but you do need experience, confidence, and good judgement with enough years on the job that your skills won’t immediately decay.

It's important to be realistic however, when transitioning into a management role, commit to it for a minimum of two years, but no more than five years if you want to retain technical credibility. And If you plan to transition back and forth, do so before your skills decay to the point you become unemployable.

So what should we do?

From an organisational design and career framework perspective, it is important that moving into management is not seen as a promotion so that moving back into engineering is not a demotion. Rather, both shifts are clearly about a career change. But, remember the point above about Amplifiers of others, spheres of influence, levels of responsibility etc.

One of the ways to achieve this is to have senior technologist roles that are peers of management roles.

Another consideration is to ensure that becoming a manager isn't the only way to be heard, to be consulted on important matters or to be informed before others. Senior technologists and engineers need to have "a seat at the table"...whatever that table actually is on your organisation.