Hey Everyone I have a weird question. How, as a software engineer, can I maximize my career growth without taking on a managerial role? Or is it just not possible to have like 7-8 year experience and not end in managerial role but still grow?

you'd wanna grow into senior -> lead-> staff -> principal engineer roles

I came to know that a lot of tech companies (like the FAANG) have setup or designed two options or tracks to follow as career growth paths when the engineer works with them. One is the Tech track the other is the Managerial or Business Track. The Tech track takes you from Dev, Senior Dev, Lead, ending up as a Principal Architect or Subject Matter Expert The Business track takes you through a managerial career growth (I am not sure of titles) and usually ends with the employee becoming (or eligible to become) a CTO Unfortunately, I am not aware of companies in India that follow this.

@shy-easter-1444 My impression was even staff software engineers manage a team?

Ive seen some orgs kinda expect lead/staff/principal engineers to 'manage teams'. but it doesnt have to be that way. When I was working FT, I always made it super clear that I wanna be an independent contributor; open to mentoring, not people management

@shy-easter-1444 Interesting. Thanks for sharing. May I ask which company you worked with during that time?

Walmart Labs, ConsenSys

@dazzling-autumn-14365 I have been writing code for the past 15 years. My role is still technical (Lead Engineer). We were trying to hire senior engineers recently from India (I work for a company based out of the UK / US) and found almost no one. Most people in India after 5-6 years of experience transition into the managerial role and those who stay technical, generally end up working for companies abroad (and are very expensive to hire). I don’t know how many years of experience you already have under your belt — but if you plan to continue working remotely, I’d say you should focus on looking for work outside India. But I think in a few years, we will start seeing a lot more job opportunities for really senior roles in India as well. (As we see more product companies emerge from our primarily services background). As a matter of fact, a friend of mine is looking to hire senior backend engineers for a gaming startup in India — but they are heavily funded in the US (incorporated in the US) - so can afford that talent.

@dazzling-autumn-14365 The answer is Yes. The question is are you wiling to become a broad subject matter expert instead of focusing on only one area e.g. backend or frontend. Tech Leads, Principal Architects are expected to have worked on all parts of the stack and have breadth and depth of knowledge across it. I've held Lead and Architect roles for a long time and keep coming back to them every time a well-meaning boss tries to push me up the hierarchy. And if you work for companies outside India your salary is independent of what your manager (usually a director) would make.

@loud-glass-33663 Thanks for sharing you insights. I graduated (B.Tech) in 2019 but started web dev as a hobby in school. Didn’t get much serious in learning until college though but still a full stack dev from 9th grade. Right now working for a UK company but I feel my role will get more managerial after 1 year if I remain here.

@dazzling-autumn-14365 I'm currently busy building a company. But yes, I've led teams from 4 to 20 people. Sometimes coding becomes a luxury, but there is a lot of code review, architecture and design work. I'd say I used to spend 1 day a week on my own code and spent lots of time making sure our architecture made sense, review code written by others and act as the technical liaison for the director/CEO.

+10 on what @loud-glass-33663 mentioned about US/UK companies Another path is freelancing and working for as many clients (or as less clients) as possible Classic ways to 10X'ing your income and playing a variety of games there with zero politics/people management imho

@dazzling-autumn-14365 I have a rare privilege of working with some world class folks at my current company. If you count our CTO as well, the average years of experience at this place is around 12-15 years. While I am involved in certain aspects of design, architecture and research, there is no hierarchy and as such, no team under me. We are just 6 engineers at present. At a previous gig, 5 years ago, I did have a team of 8-10 folks and as Amit said, actual coding becomes a luxury. You can setup systems in place to cut down on synchronous communications and meetings and be able to carve out time for yourself. Eventually, that is what I was able to achieve and reduce my involvement from day to day firefights from almost 50-60% to about 20% a week. Long story short, it is very possible. Depends on what you want. If you pushback into not going managerial, most companies will let you be. Though in India, the general perception is that if you are only writing code, they can mostly (though not always), get someone much cheaper to do what you are doing. Hence, my advice about looking abroad — it might be easier. However, I am optimistic about the future and things are going to only improve from here on.

Thanks everyone for sharing you knowledge. Definitely helpful and cleared a lot of things in my mind. 😄

In India majority folks end up becoming Managers - who end up leaving programming, doing budgeting and prod support etc,and if u r not interested in this u will get stuck at ur same level or u May progress to Principal level engineer - but this is very rare in India - few orgs allow you to do that (continue to code)- majority startup’s and few big corps - India is still considered a cost Center - so quality of work may not be gr8 in bigger corps