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# Engineering/Manager Pendulum: Generating compound interest on your career


- **Date:** Friday, Jul 10, 2026
- **Time:** 16:20–16:50 (30 min)
- **Room:** Airstream 1
- **Event:** World Congress 2026 Europe

## Recording

[Watch recording](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/100348-engineering-manager-pendulum-generating-compound-interest-on-your-career)

## Description

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.

## Speaker

### [Marcin Olichwirowicz](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/@marcin-olichwirowicz)

Engineering Manager at Netflix


## Related talks at this congress

- [Decode Your People: Using PCM to Build High-Performance Teams](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-europe/sessions/1206-decode-your-people) — Chris Redmond
- [Why Great Developers Stay Poor](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-europe/sessions/1106-why-great-developers) — Jawed Sahebjan
- [Five Ways to Break Silos in Your Engineering Organization](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-europe/sessions/1153-five-ways-to-break) — Daniel Schniepp
- [How to Pitch Innovation to Your CEO](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-europe/sessions/962-how-to-pitch) — Linda Stauffenberg, Markus Stauffenberg