For software engineers progressing through their careers, there’s more than one path you can follow.
Though plenty of engineers shift from technical roles to managerial positions, opting to prioritize their interests in business strategy and finance, others stay the course and find ways to continue honing their technical savvy and communication skills within the field of engineering.
Whether engineering management (EM) or individual contributor (IC) paths are right for you depends on what you’re looking for in your career. For every engineer who transitions into management, another successfully scales their expertise while committing to the technical side of the profession.
For Pavel Chekin, a member of the technical staff at Clumio, focusing on design and development has been a logical choice — but his decision to become an individual contributor was not one made immediately. Across a 20-year career, Chekin has thrived in various capacities, both technical and managerial. We sat down with this industry veteran to ask him about the tactics he’s used to keep finding his fits and moving forward.
How long have you been working as a software engineer, and what types of roles have you held?
I started my career as a software engineer in 2001. I worked in a small consulting company, which means that I had several projects running simultaneously with different clients, in different business areas and with different technologies. With the number of projects I’d completed growing, I felt that I was ready to take more responsibility, and I moved to a management role.
After spending the next six years improving my project management skills and receiving a formal Project Management Professional (PMP) certification, I took the opportunity to become a co-founder and chief technology officer of a software development company. That time was very intensive in terms of my responsibilities and lessons learned. I had found myself working more with IT solutions in the oil and gas industry, but my passion was for a more “classic” software development field.
So, in 2013, I joined a U.S. startup as a director of software engineering. There, I managed several teams and more than 100 software engineers. I kept my hands-on experience in software development. Then, in 2017, I made a sharp turn and decided to become an individual contributor in a small startup.
Management isn’t for everyone, but many engineers feel it can be difficult to progress in their career without making the jump. What steps have you taken to keep pushing your career forward?
The management path is not irreversible and, while your formal title in a big company defines strict areas of responsibility, your actual responsibilities in a startup may be more flexible. This is a great differentiating factor for startups. I really recommend taking on more responsibilities gradually, when you feel that you are ready.
As a software engineer, you can learn and use practices and tools from the project and people management fields. This will make you a better engineer.
Finally, it is up to you whether you want to make a jump to management, but my advice is to study a theoretical part of that role before making such a decision. Similar to software engineering, where a formal computer science or math education is not required but is highly recommended, there are many aspects of management that can be learned in a condensed way, much faster than in practice, through your own experience of trials and errors. A theoretical body of knowledge about project management will give you, at least, a common vocabulary and understanding of the existing processes and tools involved in that position. It is your passion that shows you the right way to go: this can be for writing code, managing projects, talking to people, or everything all at once.
What types of growth opportunities exist at your company for software developers who want to remain in an individual contributor role?
The most natural growth opportunities for a software engineer involve going deeper and broader, through specialization and generalization, to become an expert with currently used technologies and to learn new technologies in order to then bring them to the table. At a startup, there are so many opportunities to improve the existing technologies or to create something new. While working on a specific task, try to see the bigger picture. Analyze the requirements and impacts of what you’re working on from various angles: user experience, security, performance, maintainability.
At Clumio, I have found several areas that required special attention and that were interesting to me. I am constantly searching for new areas to improve, trying to become an expert in what I am already working on and sharing my findings with my colleagues. I’ve met exceptional people at Clumio, I have learned a lot from them, and I am going to learn a lot more. That sense of synergy, where as a team you can achieve much more than a group of individuals, drives me to be more productive, and to facilitate greater achievements.
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