[opello]

I took the post you're replying to as to have interpreted the "doesn't want to be a manager or director" idea as that there are times others or a team may be foist upon them without such a people management role being the majority of the person's time during, say, a year.

I'd also add "team lead" to the list of possible titles that indicate a primary focus on people management vs. individual contribution.

[scottlamb]

> I took the post you're replying to as to have interpreted the "doesn't want to be a manager or director" idea as that there are times others or a team may be foist upon them without such a people management role being the majority of the person's time during, say, a year.

Yes, this. There may come a point in your career where your old manager is advancing and they need a new manager for your team. The position is offered to you, maybe repeatedly. It's clear that either you take it or you and your teammates will soon have a new manager who is fresh to the team or company. Maybe you've seen the latter go badly before. Maybe your outgoing manager expresses their own anxiety about that possibility. You finally get the hint and become a manager.

Now you can change from the engineering ladder to the management ladder, but you don't have to. You can be an Engineering Manager, commit all your time to this, and hope to advance to Engineering Director. Or you can stay a Staff (Software) Engineer and also manage a few people. With some help from say a good PM, you can be a good manager to a small team without giving up the technical aspects. (I assert part-time managers are actually better for small, high-performing teams; no idle time for micro management.)

> I'd also add "team lead" to the list of possible titles that indicate a primary focus on people management vs. individual contribution.

Maybe. At some companies (e.g. Google), a team's tech lead and manager can be two different people. If so, the tech lead doesn't have reports according to HR. At promo time, they don't do the manager reviews, although they likely put a fair bit of time into writing peer reviews and participate in the promo and calibration committees, so they're not entirely without what many smaller and/or more traditional companies would consider manager responsibilities.

[opello]

> a team's tech lead and manager can be two different people

Yes, I've worked in an environment like that. I had a "functional manager" that took care of the HR side of things and a "team lead" that kind of led an effort for a specific project. They also interacted with each other about how things were going. I also agree that for small, high-performing teams it can be a very nice arrangement for everyone.

But my point was that the "team lead" role ends up requiring some amount of people management while not taking over as the primary focus for the person with that role, "no idle time for micro management" as you said. I may have been lazy with "a primary focus" as a construction because while I don't think it's >50% of time for a team lead in the structure I worked in or imagined in this discussion, I do think it can be around 20% for that person, depending on how they feel about people management, and the dynamics that exist between those involved, and the size of the team being led.