It feels common in our field (and others) to always be looking at what’s next on your career roadmap or working out how you’ll progress to your next role but how best do we support individuals that are happy in the role they’re in and have no desire for it to change.
Realistically not everyone can or wants to be a Lead Engineer/Engineering Manager/Staff Engineer and nor should we be pushing people into roles they either have no interest in or have done before and not enjoyed. We should also appreciate that these people often tend to be high performing even if they’re not interested in upward growth and that they should be cultivated as domain experts or well rounded engineers. People can also go through cycles of ambition and may decide they want to seek promotion at different points in their life. We’ll explore the idea of engineers who’re happy remaining an IC or similar, how best to support them and how to create a sense of progression without pushing them to be changing roles. If there’s a right situation to try and push them towards a new role and why it’s completely fine to not be seeking constant progression and that it isn’t a limiting factor to growing your skills.
