Like many developers, I’ve experienced that dilemma when reaching a certain point in my career: Should I continue with technical depth, or should I move towards people management? This question inevitably crosses the mind of anyone who has reached a certain level in technology, sometimes even keeping them up at night. Today, I will examine these two career paths, Technical Leader and Manager, drawing from my own experiences, and outline 3 concrete steps to help you make this important decision.
Unfortunately, career progression after becoming a developer isn’t always clearly defined. In some companies, the natural flow leads towards management, while in others, the technical leadership role commands distinct respect. However, both paths have their unique challenges and rewards; the important thing is to understand which one is right for you.
Why Does This Choice Bother Me?
In the software world, a developer’s natural career progression often branches into two main paths once they reach a certain seniority level: technical leadership or management. This distinction often relates to where individuals feel most valued and what kind of problems they enjoy solving. Over the years, especially while working on a production ERP or architecting my own side products, I’ve repeatedly seen that this decision isn’t just about title or salary, but also directly linked to daily job satisfaction.
This dilemma is typically faced by engineers who are very technically skilled. Someone who loves writing code, designing architecture, and solving complex system problems might find their motivation drop when suddenly they need to spend time on human resources, budgeting, or team conflicts. On the other hand, someone who enjoys seeing the big picture, bringing people together, and driving projects to success, rather than focusing on technical details, might find management more appealing. This is a point of conflict many of my colleagues have experienced in their careers, and one I’ve witnessed firsthand.
What Does Technical Leadership Mean, and Is It Right for Me?
Technical leadership, as the name suggests, refers to a role that defines the technical vision, guides architectural decisions, and provides technical guidance to the team. As someone who has pursued this path, for me, it means not just writing code, but also understanding how systems work as a whole and anticipating potential future problems. When designing one of the most critical modules of a production ERP, I had to consider not only the immediate functionality but also the system’s scalability, maintainability, and performance; this is precisely what a technical leader should do.
This role is often considered the highest level of an “individual contributor” (IC) role. This means you continue to write code, draw architecture, resolve performance bottlenecks, and research new technologies. However, this time, you do these tasks in alignment with the team’s overall goals and company strategy. For example, while dealing with deep technical issues like resolving PostgreSQL WAL bloat or optimizing Redis’s OOM eviction policy, it’s also the technical leader’s job to ensure these solutions are understood and implemented by other team members.
What Are a Technical Leader’s Daily Responsibilities?
A technical leader’s daily life typically revolves around lines of code, architectural diagrams, and technical discussions with team members. In my experience, this role requires continuous learning and keeping your technical knowledge up to date. For instance, researching new strategies to improve the reliability of a CI/CD pipeline or correctly implementing an event-sourcing pattern in a microservice architecture are common topics on a technical leader’s desk.
Technical leaders are also responsible for the technical development of the team. They elevate the team’s overall skill level by conducting code reviews, mentoring junior developers, and organizing technical training. This means not just solving problems, but also enabling others to solve problems on their own. When I resolved a VLAN tagging complexity in network segmentation, ensuring this knowledge spread within the team was critical for me, because it meant similar problems could be solved faster in the future.
What Does Being a Manager Mean, and What Does This Path Offer Me?
Becoming a manager is a significantly different career path from technical leadership; the focus shifts from “what” is being done to “who” is doing what and “how” it’s being done. During my time in management or observing colleagues in management roles, I understood that the biggest difference here is focusing on solving people’s problems. This encompasses issues like team dynamics, motivation, career development, and performance, rather than technical problems. In a production ERP, evaluating the difficulties a development team faced in a project delivery not only from a technical perspective but also in terms of internal team communication or resource deficiencies was a core responsibility of a manager.
The manager role involves more strategic planning, resource allocation, and ensuring the team’s alignment with overall goals. Instead of directly writing code, you’re now occupied with facilitating the team’s coding process, removing obstacles in their way, and guiding them in the right direction. While this means moving away from technical details, it carries the potential to create a much broader impact on the overall success of the project and the company. A manager’s decisions can sometimes have more far-reaching consequences than the technical decisions of an individual contributor engineer.
What Are a Manager’s Focus Areas?
A manager’s daily agenda is filled with meetings, one-on-one discussions, performance reviews, and strategic planning sessions. From what I’ve observed, managers dedicate a significant amount of time to shaping team members’ career paths, developing their skills, and unlocking their potential. This, on one hand, increases team productivity, while on the other, contributes to individuals’ personal and professional growth.
Additionally, managers are the team’s interface with the outside world. They communicate with other departments, upper management, and sometimes clients, advocating for the team’s needs and ensuring projects progress smoothly. For example, defending a project budget, requesting resources, or setting a delivery timeline are among a manager’s responsibilities. This role requires strong communication, negotiation, and leadership skills beyond technical knowledge.
What 3 Steps Should You Take to Determine Your Career Path?
Choosing your career path is a decision that requires deep thought and should not be rushed. In my experience, it’s crucial to be honest with yourself and understand what truly motivates you when making this decision. Over the years, I’ve observed this process countless times, both for myself and for those I’ve mentored, and I’ve found the following 3 steps to be quite beneficial.
Step 1: Analyze Yourself and Your Passions
This is the most fundamental and critical step in your career choice. What do you enjoy doing in your daily work? Does solving a complex algorithmic problem or helping a teammate with their career development satisfy you more? I found great joy, especially when working on a challenging system architecture problem or resolving a performance bottleneck. These moments revealed my passion for technical depth.
Make a list: What were the tasks you enjoyed most and least in the past year? I greatly enjoyed solving issues like ORM traps or PostgreSQL index strategies in software development, but sometimes dealing with unnecessary bureaucratic processes would exhaust me. Such self-observations will help you understand which role you are closer to. Even when developing my own side products, I found myself most motivated during the architectural design and optimization phases.
Step 2: Observe and Talk to Leaders Around You
Closely examine the technical leaders and managers around you. What is their daily life like? What problems do they deal with? Try to understand if they enjoy their work and what challenges they face. This observation will give you a realistic perspective on both roles. Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to work with many different leaders and saw that each interpreted their role differently.
Even better, talk to them one-on-one. Invite them for coffee, ask about their career paths and reasons for choosing these roles. You can gain valuable insights with questions like “What are the aspects you love and dislike most about this role?” or “What challenges did you face coming to this point in your career?” These conversations can provide concrete clues about which path is more suitable for you and set your expectations on a realistic footing.
Step 3: Learn Through Trial and Error
Choosing your career path doesn’t always have to be an “all or nothing” decision. You can experience both roles by starting with small steps. For example, you might offer to mentor a junior developer on your team for a while or technically lead a small project. These types of tasks offer great opportunities to see how well management or technical leadership skills suit you.
In different periods of my career, I temporarily took initiative and led to solve problems I encountered in a production environment, or actively participated in forming a new team. These experiences showed me both how enjoyable technical depth can be and the challenges and satisfactions related to people management. This way, I understood more clearly where I wanted to shine most. Remember, career paths are flexible, and entering one path doesn’t mean you can never return to the other.
What Are the Key Trade-Offs Between Technical Leadership and Management?
When choosing between technical leadership and management roles, it’s crucial to consider the significant trade-offs each path brings. In my 20 years of field experience, I’ve seen many people become unhappy in their careers because they weren’t aware of these trade-offs. Essentially, when you choose one, you will give up some valuable things from the other.
When you choose the technical leadership path, your biggest gain is maintaining and developing your technical depth. You can still write code, design architecture, and directly tackle the most complex technical problems. However, as a trade-off for this path, you might have less say in the overall strategy of the organization. Your focus will be on technically answering the “how” question in the best way, while you might be less effective in answering questions like “why” or “which direction are we heading.” In a production ERP, while I would tune PostgreSQL for optimal database performance, I wouldn’t have direct influence over where the company budget was spent.
On the other hand, when you choose the management path, you must be prepared to move away from technical details and hands-on coding. This can be a difficult transition for many developers, as writing code is an activity that both brings them joy and makes them feel valuable. What you gain in management is more influence and responsibility in areas like people management, team development, and strategic direction. You can directly impact the overall progress of projects, team morale, and individuals’ career development. However, this impact is often abstract and people-focused, not as tangible as concrete lines of code or architectural drawings. This can sometimes be unsatisfying, especially for technical people accustomed to seeing tangible output.
Conclusion
Technical leadership and management are two distinct but equally valuable paths for advancing in a software career. Each has its unique requirements, challenges, and rewards. The most important lesson I’ve learned in my 20 years of experience is that this decision must align with your personal interests, strengths, and long-term goals. Remember, your career is not a fixed line but a constantly changing and evolving journey.
By analyzing yourself and your passions, observing and talking to leaders around you, and experimenting with both roles through small trials, you can make this decision more consciously. Whichever path you choose, continue to learn, grow, and invest in yourself. The path that brings you the most satisfaction and success in your career is the right path for you.