Hey all 👋

I've been with the "Software Engineer" title for 5 years now, but only about 3 years of my actual work experience is writing code, that too only for maintaining an automation framework.

And most of my coding experiences were in bad code bases. No refactoring, no prioritizing of CI/CD pipeline setup, and no automation of repeated manual work. I thought I could never improve my skills and knowledge with such teams.

So I started applying outside and got a good offer from Intuit (if I did it, anybody can do it, you can definitely too!) but it's a technical management role where I might get to code just simple scripts and the rest is planning and stakeholder management.

I always considered myself a technical person in a pure technical path but this offer has a good hike and a good opportunity for me to learn some management.

I'm also convinced that it's rare to get to work in software engineering projects where the codebases are super slick, products used by thousands of users and where we actually get to experience scaling up as we get more users. What are your thoughts? Would you agree?

People who have taken similar paths -

1. Is it easy to switch back to pure software engineering from a technical management role if I don't like it? If I do switch back, would I start again from the bottom? 

2. Is the management part of the role going to be stressful?

3. What are the pros and cons in your experience of both roles? I'd love to hear all your thoughts.

Also please do suggest any books you've read that helped you be the best in your technical management role.

Thank you!