I've Looked At Life From Both Sides Now

By Alan Hylands

This is Part 3 of a 4 part series, detailing the trials and tribulations of moving from being a data IC to data manager and why we might think about going back to Individual Contributor again.

Quick Recap

In Part 1, we looked at the reason why we’d move over from being a data IC (in my case, an analyst) to becoming a manager of data analysts.
TL;DR glass ceiling, money, seemed like the right thing to do at the time.

In Part 2, we looked at why that move might have started to turn sour and make us cast wistful glances back across the aisle to our old IC stomping ground.
TL;DR tired of politics, missing doing what we actually enjoy, scared of messing up our careers.

What have I really learned?

Like anything in life, there are wins and losses, ups and downs. But if we put aside the hypotheticals and voices in our heads, how can it really work out in practice?

We have to be fully armed with the potential downsides. So let’s take a run through what can go wrong with the move back to IC from data manager first.

And then, in Part 4, we’ll do the positive ending to bring this all home.

What can go very right? What are the reasons we’d do it, even in the face of adversity and potential disaster? And, ultimately, why none of this should be a reason to lose sleep unnecessarily in the first place.

What can go wrong?

You don’t belong here

Ever get the feeling that you wandered into a room that you don’t belong in? Even worse, the looks on the faces of the people in the room seem to very clearly show that they know you don’t belong there either.

Whether the second part is actually true or not (if it is you’re really in the wrong room, life’s too short to be around assholes like that every day), you need to recognise it for what it is: the age-old plague of imposter syndrome.

That relentless annoying voice in your head that tells you that you aren’t actually good enough to have gotten this job and ANY SECOND NOW they’ll catch you on and give you the old Jazzy Jeff heave-ho out the door.

I won’t lie.

It’s damn hard going back to being an IC if you’ve let your skills gather a little dust over the past few years as a manager.

Even harder when you get into it and see a load of younger, better qualified, (seemingly) smarter people than you doing what you used to do back in the day. Only they’re doing it better.

Spoiler alert: they’re usually all feeling the same way. Tell the voice to shut up, you deserve this, you earned it. Don’t go sabotaging yourself and remember, if you really don’t deserve to be there on merit, they’ll catch you on pretty quickly anyway. So why worry?

Age is just a (big) number

Chris Rock does a great bit in his Bring The Pain routine where he talks about not wanting to be the old guy in the club.

Take it away Chris:

Every club you go into, there’s always some old guy. He ain’t really old, just a little too old to be in the club.

Like being a 40 year old starting back into being a data analyst IC at a hip young tech company and being told you meet the criteria for being an Under-Represented Minority.

Find me a white, straight, university educated, Western European man who squeaks into any other minority group in the world. I’ll wait.

Privilege doesn’t come any more privileged than the boxes I was able to tick but here I am as Chris Rock’s old guy in the club. Damn this natural process of ageing.

You need to be clear on how this is going to work in practice.

• Your co-workers will be younger.
• Your manager will be younger.
• Your senior leadership will be younger.
• The C-suite will be younger.

You’re going to have to print out a sheet that says “AGE IS JUST A NUMBER” and Blu Tac it on the wall in your office.

Hold on, did you just say “print out”? You own a printer? Are you from the 1970s? How old are you?

Ah damn it, busted again. Might as well have opened with the line “Back in my day…” 😦

Money matters

When the IC job market was red hot a couple of years ago, this mightn’t have been such an issue. Comp packages and bonuses were getting bigger to attract the top talent as companies went on hiring sprees and needed to compete to get their chosen hot-shots in the door.

You may not have noticed (ha!) but times have changed.

Layoffs in many sectors, not just the metaphorical bloodbath in tech, have seen a dramatic softening in this area as a glut of skilled ICs hit the job market, pushing wages down.

If your managerial experience is at a company that views management as a promotion then maybe you got a salary bump when you went in there.

Looking at a slightly more junior level over in IC World, as you try to get your foot back in the door in this constricted market, might mean a sizeable drop in salary.

• Inflation is still on the march.
• Bills are through the roof.
• Mortgages and rents haven’t corrected.
• Staple foods are now seen as luxuries.

Can you really afford to take a pay cut right now and risk never getting back to where you already are?

Head-butting the glass ceiling

It’s still a rare organization that truly runs parallel tracks for managers and ICs right up to the higher echelons of the company.

Even if they do, the air gets thinner and the opportunities fewer and fewer for progression once you drag yourself a level or two above the general population.

Maybe it’s an age thing again but where do you see yourself at age 50 or 60? Still setting up dashboard tiles in Looker or Tableau? Even if you are happy with that (and that’s perfectly fine, not hating on it at all), how does it look to hiring managers?

I saw a post on LinkedIn recently about a senior software engineer in their late 50s/early 60s who didn’t get an engineering job they’d applied for. The reason given was that they didn’t display enough drive in their career because they weren’t a CTO already.

WTF?

Either there’s a glass ceiling for ICs who don’t jump into management (which happens in many places), or every single IC should be in the C-suite by the time they reach 30 years of experience. Which is it likely to be?

If I jump back into being an IC, am I destroying my future career prospects? How many years can I expect to eke out of this move before getting slung on the scrap heap, either for being too ambitious or not ambitious enough?

Good questions all.

Who’s the boss?

Once you’ve been the one dishing out the orders and got your head thinking in that way, it can be difficult to go back to being the order-taker, not the order-giver. It really depends on your whole view of the management / IC relationship.

My personal philosophy on this is simple: management works for the ICs, not the other way around. It all comes back to that concept of Servant Leadership.

When The Rolling Stones go out on tour, Mick Jagger doesn’t work for the tour manager. The tour manager works to remove all possible roadblocks to enable Mick to take of business where it really matters: out on the stage.

They are a team. The Stones wouldn’t put on anywhere near as good a show without their great tour manager.

But without Mick, there wouldn’t be a show at all.

And no, that doesn’t mean I think I’m Mick Jagger. Of course not. I’m obviously Keith Richards…

TL;DR A good manager is a force multiplier for the positive impact of their team. But nothing happens at all without good ICs.

Getting the balance right between you and your new manager will be vital to making this transition back to IC work. If you can’t, or won’t, find the right working groove between you then you’re dead in the water.

It’s not all doom and gloom

Don’t be downhearted at this stage.

We had to cover off the downsides to make sure you were properly armed to make a big decision at the end of this. And you can’t do that without knowing both sides of the story.

In the final part of this series, we’ll look at what can go very right with making that jump back to being an IC, and what we need to consider to make the decision.

Check out There And Back Again Part 4: Looking On The Bright Side…And Making Your Decision

Photo by Zbynek Burival on Unsplash