| Here some possible paths for you from the Senior Dev role: Individual Contributor: => Lead or Principal Engineer => Staff Engineer => Architect => Senior Architect => Site Reliability Engineer => Senior Site Reliability Engineer => etc. Management: => Engineering Manager => Senior Engineering Manager => Tech Director => etc. Process: => Technical Program Manager => Senior Program Product Manager => etc. => Developer Advocate Business: => Product Manager => Senior Product Manager => etc. => CTO at a startup (team of 10 or less) Any time a Senior Dev comes to me saying they want to grow, I asked them a very simple question: what do you really want? It's a simple question, but the majority of them can't answer it. They don't know what they want. They just see colleagues get promoted left and right and have FOMO, so they panic and think "I have to push to be promoted too, let's become a Principal or Architect!" So first, it's about helping them figure out what they want: is it more autonomy, or a larger scope, or weight in the decision making process, or owning a full tech scope in a small environment, etc.? Once you know what they want, then you can plan what positions they can start targeting, and from there you can identify which skills they have to improve and which projects they have to get involved in to build credibility and get hired for it. From my experience, the skills they have to develop end up being the same regardless of the job targeted: interpersonal communication, politics, business acumen, negotiating, public speaking, and so on. |