EM or IC
I continue to get a lot of pings since publishing Founding Engineers, Part 1 and Part 2. A new trend surfaced this week, which is on the topic of EM or IC. Some of current EMs are curious about startups, but also wonder whether they can fit. This is a great topic to go deeper in.
Typical career progression means management
For most job functions in most labor history, becoming more senior is equivalent to becoming manager, and getting larger org size.
This is the case outside of the tech industry.
A store clerk grows into a shift lead role, followed by a store manager role.
A medical resident grows into a full time doctor role, followed by a managing director role of a department, then a head of hospital role.
This is also the case for non-tech functions within the tech industry.
A sales person in a tech company grows into a sales lead role, followed by a sales director role owning one region, then a sales VP role, then maybe one day a CRO role, etc.
A recruiter in a tech company grows into a lead recruiter role, followed by a recruiting director role owning one talent pipeline, then a recruiting VP role, and maybe one day a CHRO role, etc.
Tech functions are the only known exception in this career journey.
Tech function progression can be bi-modal
For all tech functions, senior individual contributors (ICs) exist and are a viable long term career path. These people remain hands-on throughout their career, and focus on solving the technical problems, and spend less time and energy on people management.
That being said, it’s still the case that there are much more senior managers than senior ICs, and the ratio gets more leaning towards management as the level goes up. Some rough anecdotal metrics (using leveling shared by Google and Meta, and common anchor by many silicon valley tech companies):
Entry level EM : IC6 ~= 1 : 1
Director level EM : IC8 ~= 10 : 1
VP level EM : IC10 ~= 50 : 1
There are 3 interesting things to dive deeper here.
Why does senior IC path exist in tech functions (but not in general)?
Why does senior IC ratio go down as level goes up?
Why do junior ICs (people before reaching IC6) almost unanimously want to become EM?
Why senior IC path exists in tech functions, and only tech functions?
I’ll focus on Eng function here.
A few years ago, I was deeply curious to understand what led people to STEM careers. I started by self-reflecting, why did I pursue STEM and eventually became a software engineer?
When I was a kid, I was a nerd. I was not good at human interactions, and I was just good at solving math problems. Once my math talent was shown, everyone around me (parents / teachers / their friends) just marked me as “that math kid”, and I continued to excel at math competitions, and picked STEM in high school, in college, etc.
In other words, I was better at solving IQ challenges than solving EQ challenges -> that led me to gravitate towards STEM subjects, and years of reinforcement loop later, I have a STEM career.
Once I had this aha moment, I observed my tech colleagues, and realized that I’m not an outlier. This is prevalent.
People in STEM careers tend to have a higher probability distribution that their people skills are areas for improvements instead of strengths. This is the outcome of an early age self-selection bias.
What does this statement have anything to do with senior IC career path?
The answer is simple: for anyone to be an effective manager, people skills are must-have. But Eng has a higher percentage of people with stronger technical skills than people skills. For the folks who are very good at solving technical problems, and don’t have enough people skills to be effective managers (or don’t enjoy doing so), it’s a happier path for them to stay in the senior IC career path.
The existence of the senior IC career path in tech is a stabilizing solution to the unique talent ecosystem in the tech industry.
Why does senior IC ratio go down as level goes up?
Now we can also easily extend to answer the next question. Senior IC career paths exist, but still, going up levels require better people skills.
When we compare an IC8 Eng vs an IC6 Eng, we’ll see some incremental technical ability delta, but it’s not a step function difference. What’s the major delta is actually the people skills. An IC8 Eng needs to solve bigger problems, which requires a larger team to collaborate with and coordinate with.
In general, beyond IC6, the growth at senior IC levels is much more on people skills, including managing up, communicating outwards, collaborations with outside org. Plus, as senior IC, the people skills also includes influencing others without management authority.
But you might ask: isn’t people skills growth requirement the same for the manager career path; why does the ratio change between manager and senior ICs?
Answer: Bayes Theorem of conditional probability.
Earlier we already established that the STEM career paths have a higher distribution of people skills being areas for improvements. But within this group of STEM folks, it’s still a distribution, and there are people who have better people skills than others. These folks with good people skills are much more likely to choose to switch to a manager career along the way.
In other words, IC8 -> IC10 are the folks who have IC10 level of people skills potential, but chose not to switch to a manager career earlier. That pool just gets smaller and smaller as the levels go up.
Why do junior ICs (people before reaching IC6) almost unanimously want to become EM?
This is a phenomenon that has also puzzled me for years. At both Google and Meta, almost every IC5 I talked to will tell me they want to get IC6 promotion and become EM.
Well, I don’t blame them. I myself was one too, with that exact same desire, and struggle.
But still, this is so universal that it deserves another look in the psychological process.
I think there are 3 factors at play:
Everyone can observe there are just way more Directors than IC8s, and way way more VPs than IC10s. So everyone concludes “it’s easier for me to grow my career on manager track”.
Everyone also thinks “managers have more decision powers than ICs at the same level”.
Junior Eng tend not to be very self-aware.
I won’t go into too much detail on #1 and #2. They are partially true and partially not true. The observation might be right, but the concluding reasons were slightly off.
I’ll discuss #3 more here.
As we already established earlier, STEM career people are more likely to have people skills as areas for improvements. It turns out, those people skills also include “self-awareness”.
In other words, junior Eng tends to have a lot of self-awareness issues. They haven’t noticed or fully internalized that their people skills were not their strength, and likely far away from being ready to be a manager.
Telling them “I don’t think you are ready yet”, or further, “I don’t think this is the best path for you” normally gets ignored, or further, strong pushback.
My advice
With this framework, someone might ask, “then what should I do?”
My opinion here is heavily influenced by my own career journey. It comes to the following flow chart:
Focus on technical ability growth towards IC6.
Along the way, focus on self-awareness development, and become much better in self-assessing “am I good at people skills?” (knowing the a priori probability is low)
If the assessment of #2 (the true one, not the self-fooling one) is “my people skills are much better than my peers”, then consider a switch to manager, and continue to assess “am I good at doing this, and enjoying this?”
If the assessment of #2 is no, stay in senior IC career path.
If the assessment of #3 is no, switch back to senior IC career path.
No matter what, don’t completely lose your IC skills; don’t become a professional people manager for life; that eventually runs into issues.
The safest career outlook is someone who can be both IC and EM, and can thrive in both startup and big tech.
Someone might ask: I’ve been an EM in big tech and away from hands-on technical work for long, can I still survive in a startup environment? I have first hand observed many examples (myself included) to conclude that: the dominant factor is willingness. Once someone starts, it doesn’t actually take too long to pick up the technical skills. Besides, don’t underestimate the extra contribution from the people skills gained in big tech. They work great in startups too.
Ultimately, my advice is: Don’t become a one-trick pony.