Choosing Between Staff Engineer vs. Engineering Manager (9 YOE)

I’m a Lead Engineer with 9 years of experience, trying to decide between moving toward Staff Engineer or Engineering Manager.

I enjoy solving problems, but with personal commitments I’m not always able to keep up with new tech daily. My presentation/communication skills also need improvement for management roles.

I’m also unsure about the long-term value of the Staff path as AI tools are getting very strong, and even less experienced engineers can design decent systems with AI help. On the other hand, people leadership feels more future-proof.

How should someone like me evaluate this decision? What are the long-term pros/cons of Staff vs. EM given today’s AI landscape?

3mo ago

FloatingRaccoon

Leoforce

3mo

AI is nowhere close to designing a scalable and reliable architecture for your specific use-case and constraints that are learned with years of experience so I'd think your staff path still looks solid to me.