Do You Really Have to Become a Manager to Advance in Your Career?
TechLead Conference 2023
20 min
Do You Really Have to Become a Manager to Advance in Your Career?
You start as a junior developer, happily delivering lines of code. Life is easy, you love your job, you are learning a lot. And then someone approaches you saying: "We need a tech leader for a new team, and you are the most experienced person available". You either become miserable or find your new calling, but your job is not really what it was before. And then someone approaches you saying: "We are looking for a new engineering manager, and you are the most experienced person available".Is that really the most optimal career path? What could we do differently? Let's have a look at your talents and the talents needed for the job.There are many different jobs in tech: writing code, leading teams, managing people and projects, helping others use your technology, teaching, research, debugging.