swinging the pendulum
27th january 2024
in 2022 i blogged about doing less. and in that post i talked about the famous engineer/manager pendulum article by Charity.
well i've swung it. i've changed roles from an engineering manager to a principal software engineer. still at the bbc. still working on iPlayer on TVs. but in an ic capacity.
ever since reading about the pendulum, i have always thought about having a go myself. in my role as a software engineering team lead (engineering manager to those outside the BBC), i wasn't finding much time to work on technical tasks. and i always felt like i was missing out.
i also realised that the greatest managers begin reluctant (like me), but eventually find a passion in helping others grow their careers. this intrinsic motivation is vital for the success of good managers. i still haven't grown that passion. Charity mentions that you should stick at a manager role for at least 2 years as it takes at least that amount of time to get a real feel for it. i managed 3 years ish, so i think i gave it a good run.
i found it particularly challenging joining a team as their engineering manager without knowing their technical estate or domain. the majority of the engineers on the team had been on the team for multiple years and had gained a vast amount of knowledge about the complexities of delivering video on TVs. i, however, was starting from a typical web dev background and knew 0 about video let alone TV.
for someone that really enjoys the technical side of our industry, and coming from previous roles where i felt like my technical contributions were really strong, this was a struggle for me. i really get a buzz from writing code, and i wasn't able to, it's as simple as that.
luckily, where i work is great at supporting people in their careers. and after a few months discussing with my manager, i was able to try out the principal role for a bit before biting the bullet. and after an interview in autumn i was offered the role permanently.
i'm not closing the book on management forever, but i am certainly enjoying being an individual contributor again and getting to write code every day.
-dom