The Vital Role Senior ICs Play as Leaders

Engineering, much like many other functions, has two career tracks:? management and IC (Individual contributor). ? But people sometimes conflate management with leadership and assume ICs cannot be the team leaders.? In my experience, the best teams are the ones that have strong IC leaders.? Here are three examples of how IC leadership is critical to the success of any engineering organization.

Growing other ICs:? Most ICs do not aspire to grow into managers.? Their goal is to advance in the IC track so they are far more likely to model their own careers after the senior ICs that have traveled the same road. ? In short, senior ICs wield a lot of influence as role models and play a big role in defining and adding to the team culture.? Whether it’s for code reviews, oncall best practices or even how to act like an owner, the junior ICs will always be watching and taking their cues from their more senior peers.? So not only do we need these senior ICs to show up the right way but we also need their help in coaching and guiding folks, who may connect better with a fellow IC instead of a manager.?

Solving organizational problems: ? Whenever I get the results for our quarterly Employee Voice Survey, one of the first things I do to share them with all the senior ICs on the team.? The primary reason I do this is because I expect these engineers to have a better feel for the concerns the survey may surface since they are deeper in the trenches. ? Additionally, I want these ICs to feel empowered about solving some of these problems since they have a sizable stake in the success of the team. ? In fact, I see the senior ICs as an integral part of the leadership team and I very much expect them to help triage, diagnose and solve all manners of problems within the team. ? And given the right support, they often do.

Finding new opportunities.? This is another area where being in a trenches has its advantages because senior ICs can spot problems on the ground long before managers do. ? These ICs operate both at the ground level and a higher altitude so they effectively form a bridge between management and rank-and-file.? In doing so, they are able to identify opportunities, size them up and bring them to the rest of the leadership team for further consideration.? By amplifying the voice of their peers, they also empower others to be even more vocal about other opportunities. This is likely to help the team be more proactive in finding opportunities and addressing would-be problems before they fester into something more troubling.

Many engineering managers are former senior ICs themselves.? And that typically means they understand the different ways ICs can add value to a team.? However, it’s still not uncommon for managers to sometimes underutilize their ICs by reducing them into one-dimensional technical problem solvers.? Teams that fail to make senior ICs part of their leadership team stand the risk of managing without a finger on the pulse of the organization. ? Worse yet, they will be operating without some of the most capable problem solvers on the team.? So empower your ICs to lead and they will make the team more resilient, more proactive and easier to scale.

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