tl;dr:"It is absolutely possible to return after a few years away. And yeah, you could come back as a principal or staff engineer. Someone will definitely hire you. However, I suggest otherwise. I suggest you come back as a senior engineer, writing software every day, for a good 6-9 months. Your grounding in the technical challenges and solution space will be much deeper and richer if you come back hands on than if you came in at a higher level..."
tl;dr:"We have been interviewing and hiring a pile of engineering directors at Honeycomb lately. In so doing, I’ve had some fascinating conversations with engineering managers who have been trying unsuccessfully to make the leap to director. Here is a roundup of some of the ideas and advice I shared with them."
tl;dr:Leaving management for an IC role creates anxiety that you may not be able to return to management later on. Charity doesn't think so. If you’re a good manager, you'll improve as an IC and will "spend the rest of your career fending off management opportunities." Moving back to IC also creates anxiety around performing again as an engineer. "After 2 or 3 years of management, it’s pretty easy to go back to engineering. After five years, it gets progressively harder. But it can be done."
tl;dr:Charity presents strategies, such as backchanneling with contacts, effective D&I practices, and also maintains that how the interview is organized is telling: (1) Was the interview conducted in a timely fashion? Were you given detailed information about what to expect? (2) Were you compensated for your any take-home projects. (3) Did they get back to you swiftly at each step of the way to let you know where you stand and what comes next?
tl;dr:Companies that describe themselves as engineering-driven tend to fall into 2 traps: (1) They alienate the business side showing little interest in other functions, such as sales or marketing. (2) Act like engineering is superior to other roles in the company. Charity hires engineers that show interest in the business, and believes that caring for the business is a "learnable skill" highlighting the tactics used at her company.
tl;dr:There are real reasons for not deploying on Fridays, and there are others often cited driven by biases, such as: (1) “It is more dangerous to deploy than not to deploy” - prevention bias. (2) “It’s always riskier to do something than to not do something” - omission bias. (3) “Deploys are scary, so we need to slow down and be careful” - slow motion bias, and more.
tl;dr:"If your heart is pulling you in one direction, by all means, follow it." Charity explores the following career paths: (1) The junior engineer who became an early manager. (2) The novice manager who wants to go back to engineering, six months in. (3) The manager who wants to go back to engineering, but only temporarily. (4) The manager who was forced into it and wants out... has wanted out for years, and 3 more.
tl;dr:"Dashboards aren’t universally awful," but they do encourage sloppy thinking, and "static ones make it impossible to follow the plot of an outage, or validate a hypotheses." Charity believes more vendors need to build for "query ability, explorability, and the ability to follow a trail of breadcrumbs." New dashboards should expire within a month if unused.
tl;dr:Charity is asked how to handle this by someone reputable leaving due to a toxic management culture. The issue with being candid isn't retribution, it's apathy. The key is to try and be effective. Put it in writing, keep it short and go through the incidents and issues, and tie them to material consequence (people quitting, etc...).
tl;dr:If you don’t do the core parts of your job, no matter how many extras you do, eventually your job probably will be in danger. This is a common trap people fall into and it's important to explain to your coworkers that you need to hit the pause button on electives, and not get sucked into them.