Remix.run Logo
▲ jeremyjh an hour ago

Good ones force themselves to do technical work hands on regularly, but will generally reach a level where they can't actually do that anymore unless they are really good at building management systems and delegating. For me it has happened in cycles over the last 25 years; after 4-6 years in management I refresh skills and go back to an IC role because I can't stand it anymore. I've done that cycle three times but I won't do it quite the same way again because its probably impossible to do without a pay cut now, and because IC don't write code anymore anyway.

This is both like forcing all IC to develop management skills but its also like the shift to cloud infrastructure or 4GL languages - we are never going back to the old ways and will be building everything at a different level of abstraction with a different span of control.