Engg, manager or Principal Engineer

Question

As a Sr developer with 20 year exp,, which path is better ? Engg, manager or Principal Engineer ?

MLE3760 · Accepted Answer

Eng manager if you wanna work with people, principal if you wanna work with people and also design/architect technical solutions.

eightysixer · Answer

"Which path is better?" That's such a poor question. Better how? Compensation? Opportunities? Impact? Something else? There are some tradeoffs with each of these paths and there is no one "best" answer, and that's before personal preferences come into play.

It's like people asking: "make the software better." On what axis? Faster responses to requests? More reliable? More scalable? Less expensive to run?

I'm going to be really harsh here, but honestly if you have 20 YOE and you didn't realize that was a poor question, stay at senior engineer. You can really mess up some junior engineer's career if you step into a leadership role you're not ready for.

19g615l1c95v8f · Answer

Whichever you’re best at. They both require leadership, but do you want to focus on timelines and politics more or designs.

technosoul · Answer

You're asking people with much, much, less experience here....

JKLMPSVZ · Answer

I’d go with IC track - tried both and IC is just less headaches and politics - also for me more balance in work/life since I work from europe for big tech em requires a lot more cooperation with US where I mostly have 9h diff

Engg, manager or Principal Engineer

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