Staff Engineer vs Engineering Manager: Which Path Should You Choose?

(Version Française)

In my last article I wrote about the role of senior developer, now it’s time to speak about the differences between the Individual contributor track and the management track.

As engineers grow in their careers, they often face a key decision: should they stay on the individual contributor (IC) track and aim for roles like Staff Engineer, Principal Engineer, or Distinguished Engineer, or should they transition into management and become an Engineering Manager, Director, or VP of Engineering?

I asked myself this question a bunch of times until I switched to the management track and I want to give some inputs that can help you in this decision.

Both tracks offer rewarding careers but require different skill sets, responsibilities, and mindsets.

Let’s break down the differences and help you decide which path is right for you 🫵.

Please be aware that any position depends on the context of a company. A manager in a big tech company will code less than in a smaller company and the inverse, a staff engineer should do more “management stuff” in a small company.

Key Differences Between Staff Engineers and Engineering Managers

Scope

• Staff Engineer (Individual Contributor Track): Focuses on technical excellence, solving complex problems, leading architectural decisions at a company level, and influencing engineering direction.
• Engineering Manager: Focuses on people management, team coordination, delivery, quality, hiring, performance reviews, and career development. From my point of view, having only people skills is not enough to be an efficient Engineering Manager, if you don’t have technical skills, you will struggle to understand your team and support them in their hard skills problem, but don’t get me wrong, you should not be the “strongest” developer of the team but you should be able to manage and challenge hard skilled developer and make critical decisions based on your technical comprehension.

Influence and Leadership

• Staff Engineer: Leads technically, they may mentor other developers, define best practices, influence the design system and drive technical strategy across teams. They are accountable for technical decisions but those decisions are often challenged by other engineers, so the responsibility is often shared.
• Engineering Manager: Leads organizationally, they set priorities, assure the delivery, remove roadblocks, and align teams with business goals, leading a team means that you are accountable for this team. You should assume the pressure and the mental workload.

Problem-Solving Approach

• Staff Engineer: Solves deep technical challenges such as system scalability, performance optimization, and infrastructure improvements. You’ll make recommendation and you’re the “go-to guy”
• Engineering Manager: Solves organizational challenges such as improving team collaboration, cohesion, resolve conflicts, assume the company’s decisions, support the company’s vision, dealing with underperformance, and ensuring alignment with product goals and company business strategy.

Success Metrics

• Staff Engineer: It’s hard to define success metrics for a Staff Engineer, because at this stage of a career, the velocity/delivery is not the first criteria we’re looking for, we more measure the impact in term of code quality, architecture decisions, system improvements, mentoring…
• Engineering Manager: Measured by team effectiveness, project delivery, team morale, and individual career growth.

Career Growth and Future Opportunities

• Staff Engineer: Can progress to Principal Engineer, Distinguished Engineer, or hands-on CTO in small company.
• Engineering Manager: Can move to Director, VP of Engineering, or even a CTO role (if business and leadership-oriented).

How to Choose Between the Two Tracks?

What Energizes You?

• Do you love solving deep technical problems, design systems, put your head where nobody will put their hand? Do you love writing code and technical documentation, schemas…? → Stay on the IC track.
• Do you enjoy leading teams, resolve organizational problems, help others in their careers development? → Consider management.

Do You Want to Code most of the time?

• Yes? → IC track.
• No, I’m okay with less coding and more organization and alignement on priorities → Management.

Are You Comfortable with Ambiguity and People Issues?

People don’t leave companies they leave managers.

Think twice about this one, there is no “Ctrl+ Z” or undo when you’re a manager.

• If you prefer structured problem-solving → IC track.
• If you enjoy handling interpersonal challenges → Management.

Which kind of impacts and decisions you prefer?

• If you like influencing technical decisions and make impact at a technical level→ IC track.
• If you prefer making team decisions and having impact at an organizational level → Management.

Do You Want to Scale Your Impact?

• If you want to scale through technology → Staff Engineer.
• If you want to scale through people → Engineering Manager.

There’s no “right” choice, both tracks can be rewarding. It depends of what do you want to achieve and the good news is that some engineers switch back and forth between IC and management roles during their careers.

If you’re unsure, try a tech lead position first, as it blends both roles before fully committing to one path.

I hope this article will help you, please share it, clap it 👏🏽 and give me some feedback.

👋 If you have any questions or want to discuss, please reach me!