I’ve gone from IC to Director before via internal promotion but has anyone gone from IC to Director while changing companies? I’m pretty confident in my resume but I’m not sure what to expect from interview loops TC as Principal level IC == 260
I've heard of this, and that some companies (Uber) are even notorious for it. But no idea how it actually happens. Guessing you have to run into a VP of that company outside work and accidentally sell your vision in casual conversation. Have seen a few people who made this jump give talks, and they seemed extremely political
Happens here, surely.
To answer your question, it really depends. I’ve gone through interviews for director roles where at some they only have non-technical senior leaders casually chatted with me, some others have mostly IC and first line managers asked me technical questions, and some being a mixture of both. In general, I was asked about my management style, execution fluency, and of course technical ability. Directors are really not much different than managers really.
Is this your first direct people management role? Your note said 25-30 hc. Is that of direct team? Expect questions about management style, team development and how you’d handle certain team situations (depending on the co, they look for certain buzzwords to rate whether you’d be a good people manager). Overall, you’d need to show that you can delegate & manage up effectively.
Also, IC at 260k is pretty decent. Having a team is a whole lot more responsibility. Hope the TC is worth that for you (unless you LOVE mentoring & growing people).
Not my first direct management role no, I went from team lead to group manager to director a couple jobs ago before going back to IC at startups. Went from managing a team of 8 to managing 3 teams while staying hands on to unblock and eliminate bottlenecks. It was nice there because I had authority over product but I haven’t seen a similar structure since
Why did you move from Director to IC?
The right startup came knocking on my door Also it was a bit of a meat grinder, I had around 40% turnover, my comp was decent but I had to pay my staff peanuts and keep them motivated without any equity as we were PE owned
Can you organically grow into a director role at this startup?
Do you know what a Director does? Do you know that you want to do that stuff?
I’ve been a director before managing >50M in revenue, what’s the relevancy of your question?
It’s highly relevant. A lot of dodos in IC roles say they want X title but they have no clue what it means to do the job. $50m in revenue per year? Sounds like a pretty small shop.