Six years backend at the same company. The lead role is about 8 percent more money and six reports, the lateral is the same pay on a stack I have never touched. I have to answer in two weeks and my manager has made it clear the lead seat will go to someone else if I pass. What I cannot judge is which door closes behind me.
Eight percent is not a management premium, it is a rounding error. Where I have worked the real jump shows up at the second rung, when you manage managers, and at the first rung you are usually paid within a band or two of a senior engineer while carrying the on call for six careers. If you want the money, the senior and staff IC ladder is usually the better paid path per unit of stress. If you want the job because you like the job, that is a completely different and much better reason.
Took the lead role for the money at 29 and stayed fourteen months hating almost every week of it. What it cost me was not salary, it was two performance cycles of average reviews because I was mediocre at a job I did not want, and that follows you around internally far longer than a title does. If you take it, take it because you would do it at the same pay.
I will take the other side. The lateral is the riskier one here, and it depends entirely on whether the platform team is funded. A platform team that exists because a VP wants leverage is a great place to be, a platform team that exists to absorb toil nobody wants is a holding pen and they get outsourced or reorganised first in a downturn. Go and ask who their internal customers are and whether anyone would complain if the team vanished.
This is the question that saved me once. The honest answer from the hiring manager was that nobody would notice for a quarter, and I withdrew.
Ask who backfills you if the lead role does not work out. If the honest answer is nobody, the door behind you is already closed.
@day_rate_dee · 2w ago · 3 replies
I have done both directions. Going up is easy, coming back down is the expensive trip: I managed for three years, went back to IC, and effectively landed a level below where my peers had got to because I had shipped nothing with my own hands in that time. The lateral cost me about four months of feeling stupid and then nothing. If you are genuinely unsure, take the move that is cheap to reverse.
Reply
Report
@day_rate_dee · 2w ago
Syntax within a fortnight, judgement about six months. The bit that never fully came back was the patience for long uninterrupted work.
Reply
Report
@stipend_sam · 3w ago
How long before the coding came back after three years of management?
Reply
Report