Engineering Career Progression — Programmer, Architect or Manager?

There is always a point in your technology career where you feel that you are stuck and you want to move up but not sure how. You have been an expert coder and love programming but you feel you are ready to take on new things but not sure where to start. Sounds familiar? Well, all of us at a senior level who have been in the industry for a long time at some point of time have faced this dilemma and I am seeing the same questions come up in my team. What is the answer to this? Let us try to answer this by asking 3 simple questions:

What are you passionate about?

When you have reached the point where you are in the industry as a programmer for a few years now and you have started thinking about other things to do, you should also have also started thinking about what drives or motivates you.

There would be your colleagues, your managers, leaders whose work you always admire and feel you would be really happy to do that. Well there is a goal for your career. Was there something else that motivated you?Maybe it was just coming to work to be with the team and help the team grow. Was it the fact that the design of the systems involved was what you were passionate about and you always dreamed about improving the current system? Maybe you were too thrilled to just start your laptop and code. Nothing else!

My suggestion here is to try and freeze your career goal in the first 5–7 years of your career which makes it easy for you to just focus on improving that goal.

Do you want to try something new?

Now the other aspect which I commonly hear is: “ I have never tried engineering management/people management or I have never tried to be a product owner, I want to try that”. This is awesome and there is nothing wrong in trying. However, make sure that the new profile you want to try is something that you feel you will be better at than what you are currently doing. I have seen instances where engineers are pushed into being team leads and managers when they are clearly not comfortable in leading and were all outstanding programmers. This I feel is something that you should rethink and course correct as soon as possible before it is too late.

Why do you want to switch your profile?

This is the best part. I have many examples where engineers come to me and say “ I want to convert as a manager at my level since I feel there is more chance of growth”. Please don’t switch your job profile just to get promoted.

In summary, switch and try something new only if that switch sets you up with your goal and that switch aligns with what you are passionate about. Once you find your match and you put in that extra effort, success and growth in your career will follow.