Engineering Manager route v/s Staff/ Principal Software Engineer

I'm relatively early in my career, and has been working as a Program Manager (it doesn't mean that I have anyone reporting to me). I love what I do. The pay is also decent. I also like software engineering (app development mainly). I used to code regularly and has got some apps on the Play Store as well (hobby projects, not big). I'm confused whether I should continue as a Program Manager (going down the managerial route) or switch to a Software Engineering role. I feel like I should get some software engineering experience before being in a role working closely with Software Engineers. But, another thought is why move away from something that I love doing. I'm a bit scared on taking a decision (grass would always be greener on the other side). I don't know anyone like me in the same route. Note: I work at a fortune 50 organisation, awesome team/manager, and all of them are completely supportive of whatever decision I make. My manager is happy to help me grow in any direction (both at the same time as well), but spending energy on one would yield better results. Age: <25 Education: B.Tech (no MBA) Exp: ~ 2 years Note: I would definitely love to be a good manager down the lane (always liked working with people). (I don't want to make this into a thread to fight on coding v/s non coding roles)

Hi fellas recently I have joined a company and i have been working with 18.5 lpa with 2.10 year of experience so wanted to know what I should pursue learning next to reach senior applications Engineer as currently im an applications Engineer Tech stack - java backend Qualifications - M.Tech software engineering I want to just reach 28 lpa by September next year with role of sde2 equivalent as i would be having 4 year of experiencel

Will entertain only serious questions that respect anonymity. I don’t mind humor, but trolling is strict no no. Conducted one AMA session last week & was overwhelmed by both number & positive feedback. I might choose to skip any question repeated from last time. Some things about me - I love to code & go beyond coding - Managed a team of around 20 people before - I love mentoring people - Presently overseeing the architecture and lifecycle of a suite of products Don’t mind me giving you some useful gyan 😀

Please guide I'm lost I don't know what interests me the most I want to know reality check of all 3 roles - Salary, work life balance, growth. Share your thoughts it'll help. I've currently 2.5y of Experience as Software Engineer in Accenture but I played many roles in project - Testing, Development, Client Demos. Now I'm just lost whichvdirection should I go considering it has good future and not over saturated/fear of being replaced by AI?

Hey everyone, I'm heading into the last round of an Engineering Manager interview, and salary talks are on the horizon. Any quick advice or tips you could share? TIA

I want to understand how much the salary Software Engineer can go up to? Bit background about me: - I have been coding since school time, (we had Java in the ICSE board), and have built multiple websites, apps, games, so had good experience before my first job. - 2021 graduate and worked remotely for an early stage startup, started with 20 lpa, and got excellent experience and learning. - This year, I switched to another remote company, with the role of SWE-2 and 42 lpa. I have heard that salaries as Software Engineers start to plateau after a while. So by the time I have 10 YOE, and a Staff Software Engineer, maybe I can expect to reach ~1 Cr. But at 20 YOE i.e double experience of 10 YOE, my salary would only grow about 50% like to ~1.5 Cr? Am I understanding this correctly? I have heard people say that one only gets better increment rates as once moves into management. I want to understand how much is that? And at what age am I too old to be hired as a Software Engineer?? Need more insights to understand this better.

Total YoE: 6.5 Current role- Technical lead B.tech Good leadership qualities. Aspiration: to be an engineering manager, Not sure about Architect. Career Background: full stack developer all my career, also Scrum Master role for 1.5 years(got excellent feedback). Tried running my own startup on weekends but failed. Current working as TL. How do I take my career forward to be an eng. Manager in future? Will MBA help? Or any other route?

Why AMA?- New to GV. I see potential here; trying to gauge audience and perhaps I can talk about a thing or two; can definitely learn from ya’al otherwise. Primer Qs (from some successful AMAs outside of GV)- What tech has better future? Is Ai going to kill our jobs? How to increase Tc 5x, 10x, 20x+? Startups vs big corps? Background, Tc stuff- Decade+ yoe Started with <10Lpa. Crossed >10Lpm. Life is fun and no amount of money is enough. I’ve seen it firsthand that the investments and luxuries grow at far bigger rate than your comp, Can’t complain though.

I’m working at an Indian startup that raised their series B recently... I’ve been here long enough to wear multiple hats and currently doing Solutions consulting(fancy way of pre sales) Now as the company is getting out of early stage, it looks like now they want more specialists. So I’ve been asked if I’d want to continue doing solutions engineering or switch to being a manager in CX(onboarding, support or success)….cant become a manager in SE as there are very limited no of folks here. I’d want to know if folks here have some guidance on when should one look to switch the path from an IC to a Manager career ladder. Some additional info: 1. Personally I feel I should top out my compensation range as an IC before taking a manager role as my assumption is managers don’t get paid highly in India (let me know if that’s not the case) 2. I’ve more than 7 years of professional experience 3. Fairly good with people and would like to go the manager route someday but I feel if I switch now it might hamper my long term earning potential. Is this thinking right? Would appreciate any help that folks can provide to be able to make this decision. Or any guidance on how to think about this as well(if I’m being shortsighted). TIA!

I have 6 years experience. My current base/fixed is 60 LPA. (I also got a 5 lakh bonus and 5 lakh of my ESOPs vested this year making my total vested about 30 lakh. So the total comp is 70). I'm being offered a senior engineer position in an early stage startup (as part of the founding engineer team). They haven't given an offer yet. Being early stage, the emphasis will most likely be on ESOPs. How do I evaluate this and set my expectations? (If I were to switch to a mature company, I believe the hikes usually are between 15-20%? How does this work for early stage startups?)