Career paths for Developers. Hint: there's more than 2.

Most software engineers are led to believe, especially in the early years of their career, that the two options they have ahead of them are becoming a software architect if they like to “remain technical” or becoming a manager if they’re a “people person”.

Turns out, as always, reality is more nuanced.

To understand the options that lie ahead of an engineer, it is important to understand where in the ecosystem they currently lie. The engineer is part of a team that owns a feature → that is part of a product → that is part of a solution (a market need) → that is part of a company that sells multiple such solutions → that is part of an industry → that is a part of the economy.

It is important to get this perspective, to see the dependency the engineer has on people working on ALL of the other layers of the stack.?Read this post on business basics for engineers, to get a better perspective of it all (tldr: hangout with people not at all like you, if you want to grow). Lastly, no matter what role you play, keep in mind that all roles require dealing with people and business. If someone tells you otherwise, you already know more than them.

With that perspective in mind, here are the most popular career options to be aware of.

Software Architect.

Indeed, becoming a software architect is the most intuitive option, because we’ve learnt the code → design → architecture graduation early on and is usually a sign of maturity in defining and evaluation software systems. This is usually a choice made consciously, by people who do not want to become people managers. To go this way, one key requirement is for you to be really, really good and have a keen sense of absorbing business requirements to be a champ. Depending on company structures, CTO roles are the pinnacle of this, unless the CTO doubles as the head of engg as well. Which brings us to…

People Management

This is probably the most common path people either choose, or more likely,?are made to choose?as they become more and more senior. While the social status of getting into “management” is cool, the transition from being responsible for code to being responsible for people outcomes is something the majority managers rarely excel at. But if you enjoy working with people and importantly,?if others enjoy working with you, that is an early sign that you’d love this path. You’d be considerably tech aware, but will have championed the subtle art of delegation, which only the best are good at. Again, CTO or VP/Head of Engg. are typically the peak of it. What most folks won’t tell you is, sooner or later, these roles are primarily business roles, responsible for business outcomes.

Product Management

This is arguably the most recent and vibrant area within tech, that has been evolving significantly in importance and influence. PMs are the famous bridge between business and engineering. Imagine a set of concentric circles with engineering at the center: the PMs are the circle around it to interpret the outside market-facing circle for business goals/requirements, define a strategy (aka roadmap), break it down to releases (working with the EMs, who enjoy this, because? They enjoy working with people! Aced the quiz), work with devs/designers to get the release ready and then take it back to folks in the circle around them, who market (Marketing) and sell (Sales) it. PMs get the widest exposure of most roles inside the company, outside the CXOs, given the nature of the role. Now, some PMs will tell you, they’re the “CEO of their product” — your response to them should be “ha ha, cute”. But to be fair, a PM role is indeed a solid foundation to go become a future founder or CEO. Coming from engineering, you’d have the unique benefit of evaluating technical solutions as well as business requirements. Ton of people engagement too. If you want a healthy mix of tech, people and business, look no further. PMs are generalists peaking at Chief Product Officer or CEO roles.

Solution Architect

Now there’s types of companies — B2C like Facebook, B2B like Salesforce. But within B2B, the massive market with billions (trillions?) of dollars is what is called enterprise software. This is software that is built around a core product which does ~50–60% of the core tasks to be done, but the remaining is customization done around this for high-end, large corporations we call “enterprises” in software. A solution architect is usually someone who plays a big role in this part of the world and is usually a ninja at putting tools/products together to build a solution to a business problem the enterprise has. Some of the most knowledgeable people I know fall into this category, but it is typically a breadth of knowledge, rather than depth. You’d work with products you’d treat as black boxes (over simplification, of course), but know how to put them together. Of course, this track too will lead to people management after a while and depending on how you navigate it, the same CTO type roles apply. Some use this path to transition into PM too.

Startup

I’m writing this post in 2022. The internet has truly come of age, the pandemic is pushing the remote movement and the opportunity for startups is huuuuge right around now. As they say, anyone can start a startup, but not everyone does. The reason primarily is that the risks starting a startup comes with, aren’t everyone’s cup of tea. But then, if you’re so inclined, you’re well qualified as a developer to play a big role in a startup as a cofounder or early hire. In either case, you’d grow with the company. At the end of the day, despite all the projected “coolness”, building a startup is building a business and if you’re comfortable with switching gears to marketing, you’d be the primary founder, but if not, find someone who is and s/he’d love to have you as a cofounder (more than you can imagine!). You’ll get the joy of building a product, a company of people, a culture and a business from scratch. If by now, you’re not thrown off by the description, may be you’re indeed startupy. To be clear, a startup is typically short for software-driven, highly scalable, risky, hyper-growth, venture-fundable businesses. But more options are evolving here too (google “bootstrapping SaaS”).

Consulting

Now we’re getting into the niche territory. Over time, some engineers become so good at doing specific things — building on a specific platform, database optimizations, etc. — that they embrace consulting. Two ways to do it — go it alone or build a services business. In either case, you’re building a pipeline of projects and will inevitably need marketing skills, but unlike a startup (which typically is high-risk), if you have the appetite of working with your clients without losing it, this is a relatively low-risk, highly rewarding (financially and otherwise) path. If you manage it well, you’d have better control of your time.

Standards Technologist

This is rarified air now — and am writing this only since more people should know these people exist. When I was a grad student, a CS professor proclaimed that the highest point an engineer can reach in their career is to become a standards technologist. Now, who are they and why are they so cool? These are people who work on industry-standards for evolving technologies to ensure there is interoperability between systems/vendors. Example: TCP, IP, HTTP, JS (the language itself), etc.. If I typed this post on a Mac and you read it on Windows, these are the folks we need to thank most. Personally, of all engineers I’ve ever met, the maturity level at which these folks operate is incomparably higher. The entry level for this is to be an architect, but with both depth and breadth. These folks know how software, hardware, business and industry operate. They’re pure wow.

I’ve tried to call out the more common career options engineers have, but there’s definitely others — research in large corporations, developer relations, training, Marketing, MBA (a dev+MBA would make a good PM, but that is not remotely a hard requirement), one-person-SaaS-founder -- for instance. Let me know if there’s other big buckets I’ve missed.

But Importantly...

The one thing you want for sure is to become any of this intentionally, not accidentally. Do anything to not?get caught in the rat race (see regret#2)?— I’m opinionated, but I think your goal should be to own your time. You’re welcome to checkout my startup’s product, which gives you:

• A Career Planner to plan long/short term career plans
• A Work Journal to keep track of progress
• A Mentoring module to get advice from someone you respect
• If you like it, you can even engage your manager to help enable these plans

Get access at https://www.yugahq.com or message me (here on LinkedIn or at [email protected]) to learn more.

Hope this is helpful.