Management or FAANG?
What should I be aiming for? I'm a lead developer trying to make my next move. Is it better to get into management in some random firm or be that technical person (BI Engineer) at one of the FAANGs? Appreciate if you cover pay vs prestige vs career.
Management
Which is exhausting, frustrating, hard to measure, paid less, highly competitive, and political...
That technical person at one of the faang
Management Managers rarely care about engineers. Being an engineer you will always be the one taking orders and will be told my some shmuck what do it. If you are good a good engineer you probably can make a difference to people reporting to you
Interview for both the roles and you will figure out by end of your first onsite interview. I did the same, realized I'm good tech wise and also not ready to take a pay cut and started leet coding.
If I could do it all over again, I’d stick to engineering. People management comes with even more politics and shitty admin work. Not many people make it past Manager or Director. if you’ve been out of coding for too long then you’re more expendable than the average engineer.
Agreed. At big companies managers are just people managers. You don’t make product decisions or even manage the project. Sure it may pay well but it’s a very different job. You might not like it. You also might not be good at it. Nothing personal but good engineers don’t necessarily make good managers.
110% Power is in making shit not the overhead of mgmt.
Do what you like most. If you like to code stat engineer. If don’t, try becoming people Management. Only advice is, don’t make a decision for money, engineers in FAANG are paid handsomely