Engineering/Manager Pendulum: Generating compound interest on your career

Most career advice tells you to climb the ladder, one step at a time. I’m going to tell you why I jumped off it - and why that “demotion” became the best decision of my career.

I started as an engineer in startups, then moved into management at a large company, leading around 40 people. But I had never been an engineer at that scale myself, and it showed. So I did something that surprised everyone: I swung back to an individual contributor role.

It wasn’t free. I reported to managers with less experience than me, so I had to keep my ego low. And a zig-zag CV made recruiters suspicious, which made offers harder to get.

But the return was bigger than I expected. My years as a manager made me a sharper engineer - I knew which fights were worth having and which to drop. And when I swung back to management, I didn’t start from zero. I came back with fresh technical confidence and real empathy for my team, because I had just lived their reality.

I’ll show you why the pendulum isn’t really a back-and-forth motion. Done right, it’s a curve that keeps going up.