Has anyone gone back to IC to help you become a better manager?
I’m wondering if I should go back to IC to build quicker technical decision-making ability, or if can I develop that on the job as a manager.
I’ve been a tech lead/manager with 10 direct reports for about 6 months. Long term I see myself in management, but I’m not very confident at making sound architecture or implementation trade-off decisions in the time I have.
Additional Context: I have 10+ years of programming experience (mostly in academic research) but I only spent 2.5 years as an industry software engineer before landing in management when my boss left. I believe I performed well at the senior IC level because I had time to dig into topics, but as a manager I have much less time to do that. I understand the reasoning behind good design decisions and I utilize my team’s expertise, but I don’t have the fast judgment built from years of industry experience that great managers have.
TL;DR:
• Can technical judgment/intuition realistically be developed on the job as a manager?
• If you or someone you know switched back to IC and returned to management later, was it beneficial?
Thanks in advance!