I can't say that management was a planned path to me. I am not the kind of person that makes long term plans like building a career but I was not happy with how my career developed. Growth and money opportunities to technical people would not come as easy as the management counterparts. I've written about it in the CTO Field guide.
In this post I want to focus on the anxiety of the change from engineer to tech lead/manager/CTO. The ladder where you start the same but up to some point make a decision that can't be reverted is commonly called the Y career model. It is a term used to describe different profiles inside the same company assuming they have a common path forward.
I call it a myth in my book because of empirical evidence - it is more about retention than the real prospect of monetary equity or a path where you could move between careers without prejudice. Its format don't make space for people that move back and forth on these two lanes without prejudice. This is sometimes called "pendulum career" and happens with people with developed Leadership traits.
This is a commonly dismissed trait in any ladder: Leadership. You don't need to be a Manager to Lead (intentional italic). The power balance, accountability and responsibility balance plays a strong part on why it is hard for engineers to lead than managers tho.
But for the developing leader there are subtle situations that may delay its development or have them to revert their decision and it has to do with Autonomy. The drive for a leader to move from engineering to management is usually an emergency, new opportunity, power vacuum, large scale growth or call to duty.
But you see a lot of people in these situations burning out and deeply sad even while successful. And what they say is “I wanted to spend time coding” but if you dig in it something like “Why would I bother with the extra work of getting top downs? I am not heard. ” comes up.
There is a whole session about “top downs” and decisions in the book which tends to make sense and be clearer as you get the knack for the job you are doing - it is hard to lead if you never led, it is hard to manage if you never managed. It is hard to code if you never coded. But platitudes apart it seems that while in transition to a management job these interferences invalidate your decision, but they don't.
On mentorship sessions I do with tech leads and CTO it is common that something like “I don't feel I have autonomy to make decisions” comes up. When we break down the situation using real life examples the person recognises that the perceived lack of autonomy is a mechanism of protection put in place to give it time for initiative. Or just an oversaw. The answer to at least one of the four items below were missing:
Were you accountable for the decision ?
Did you communicate the disagreement in simple terms ?
Did the person on the opposite side saw their actions as “cancelling your autonomy”?
Was a decision made before ?
I invite you to answer these questions if you felt that your leadership was questioned in your current role. If any of these questions is a “No”, talk about them in your next 1:1 with your manager (you do 1:1s right?).
You may be surprised that it can be a waiting game: people are waiting for you to lead and you are waiting for them to let you lead. Meanwhile there are decisions to be made and everyone is equally anxious to ensure safety and move forward. Recognising and discussing this is a powerful growth moment. It is like the time when you paired to talk engineering, but for leadership.
Also remember: Anxiety is a killer of perception of goodwill for both sides of a decision.
That's it !