When I lived in France there was a program called “La piste de Xapatan” in which contestants had to negotiate a series of challenges before whizzing down a zipline and running up a hill to catch a train. But “le train de Xapatan part toujours à l’heure” (the train from Xapatan always leaves on time) which meant that usually the contestant would arrive just after the train started to move and either just catch it or just miss it by seconds.
The career path train, however, isn’t like that. It doesn’t stop at the station every day and when it does stop you have to decide whether or not to get on. When you want a change of job for some reason, there doesn’t seem to be a train. And when you aren’t really looking for anything the train shows up and you have the opportunity to board while it is in the station. But it won’t be in the station again tomorrow; you have to decide right now.
It’s especially hard to decide if the opportunity takes you out of the comfort zone of what you have been used to in your career so far, or if it involves relocating. Two times the career path train stopped for me were “would you like to go to France and open up an R&D center for us?” and “would you like to return to California and run all of R&D?” There’s always some sort of tradeoff in a promotion, not just more money for doing what you are already doing.
Big companies usually have dual career ladders for engineers, with a management track and a technical track. However, it’s a bit of an illusion since only the strongest technical contributors really have a sensible option of staying completely technical and continuing to advance. I think dual career ladders are mostly important because they institutionalize the idea that a senior technical person might be paid more than their manager, sometimes a lot more. In more hierarchical eras that didn’t happen.
But the fact that only the strongest engineers can keep advancing as engineers means that at some point most of them will have to transition into management or into some other role that makes use of their engineering background along with other skills to do something that is more highly leveraged than simply doing individual contributor engineering. It’s a big step that will require you to learn stuff you’ve not had to do before.
But people are often not keen to take that critical step out of their comfort zone. I’ve sometimes been surprised at how reluctant people are to step up and take on new challenges when I’ve offered them what is essentially a significant promotion. Funnily, one of the biggest issues is always the salary review process. Everybody wants to avoid the work and responsibility of reviewing people that work for them, and sometimes this hate is so visceral that people refuse to have anyone report to them. I’ll be the first to admit that reviewing people’s performance is not the most enjoyable part of management, but it is just a few days per year for the formal part. Actually the trick is to make sure that nothing in a review is a surprise because you’ve already been communicating feedback both good and bad throughout the year. It is bad management on your part of you surprise someone with a really bad review when they didn’t think anything was wrong.
I’m sure that there are anecdotes to the contrary, but in general I think most people are best to take opportunities when they are offered. This is especially true in startups and small companies. They tend to grow downwards, in the sense that people there early get to bring in the lower levels. There are more opportunities for responsibility early (a plus) but less formal training (a negative) unlike large companies that often have in-house management training.
So when the career path train stops, you’d better have a very good reason not to get on.