Looks like there are very few manager roles in the market compared to IC roles at the moment and even in absolute numbers A lot of companies like LinkedIn Facebook and Twitter (to name a few) are doing org flattening to cut middle management and are not promoting managers plus giving more responsibility to existing managers Some companies are even restricting management promotions as there is very less headcount or org growth. However IC promotions are still there At Apple it’s super hard to transition to a management role currently as not many teams are growing A lot of people say that this is there to stay and the tech industry is going in a direction where executives want to do more with less people and the golden era of growth phase is done. This means very less management opportunities and also harder to get promoted in the manager track. I am an IC for 15+ years, have worked in 3 FAANG companies, have a PhD in CS from a top 10 school. I missed out on management opportunities which I got earlier in my career as I wanted to be an engineer for my entire career Now I am very interested in management but looks like it’s super hard to get it. Any ideas ? Is IC a much better career path for the future ? TC 640k #airbnb #uber #amazon #netflix #linkedin #twitter #snowflake #databricks #nvidia #pinterest #snap #microsoft #doordash #square #roblox #coinbase #robinhood #instacart #salesforce
IC is the way
Why do you say that ? Are the days of growing up the ladder in management gone ?
Going to be alot more pressure for staff levels and above
What’s the why behind your wanting to be in management?
That’s a very big topic and let’s just stick to this topic so that it’s informative to everyone
There are less managers than ICs of course there will be less roles. What am I missing?
I am just saying even in absolute numbers there are hardly any EM roles.
In almost all other industries, manager is the real brain and wisdom, IC is just foot soldier. That’s why tech industries valued managers in the past decade, giving them more prestige, power, and credit than IC Until people found out that tech industry is different from other industries. IC does the real work, middle managers take credit for it by leveraging the power and connections they have at hand. If company gets rid of middle managers, productivity wouldn’t drop, probably would even increase due to removal of middle man acting as an info barrier between different stakeholders. And more people have come to realizations to this. Couple years ago, if you say “I managed a team of 30 people who delivered xxx fancy stuff” recruiters were like mega-impressed, now recruiters would get suspicious and they’d ask how much of that was hands-on work by yourself that you can independently re-invent when you move to the new employer. Some recruiters even asked me for the amount of time that I spend in meetings, when I gave a high number, they immediately let their guards up and told me that they only want IC who spend less than 20% time in meeting And I don’t think this is because tech companies stopped growing. The growth will recover in future years due to AI, but EM golden years aren’t coming back. Those new AI companies are full of ICs and they don’t even have EM role
This is very true and is exactly what I think is happening. However I am not sure if this trend is there to stay forever.
I do think this is here to stay. Golden years of tech wild growth is gone. AI is research-driven and requires small headcount of elite phds, so it doesn’t require EM to play politics and build empire. Both EMs and ICs will take a hit, but EMs will be hit way more than ICs.
I'd rather have my balls eaten by Hannibal Lecter than to manage people at a big company. Meetings 24/7, politics, excessive performance evaluations, no thanks!
I'm in this boat. Its hard to say no, you work harder than most and deal with all the sh!t from above and all the cr@p from the bottom. It's constant shoveling and hard to get time to ve strategic as the priorities always change. Always have system and data issues and consistently need to complete adhoc reporting or updates to leaders in the forms of excel, pp or any other doc type which is hot that week.
There is no IC career in the industry, just an illusion management builds up to create more rats flocking to the race. Management experience ages with time, while ICs have to keep doing leetcode and other nonsense to keep up. Most new grads can do what 20 year old veterans can do. Try switching to another IC role at your current TC first, it will tell you how difficult that one is too.
There are less roles across the board, not just for EMs
That’s definitely true but much much lesser roles for EMs and I am not sure if this trend will continue