"From Geek to Star" #2 - Manager or Expert?

"Be like water, my friend" - Bruce Lee

🗓️ This week – Chapter 1, Part 2: The Great Fork
How to think clearly about the Manager vs Expert career decision, beyond salary or company structure.

(If you missed Part 1, the launch edition, catch up here)

Most companies have a management career track where you climb up the ladder - and so does your compensation. But few offer a clear expert career path for tech engineers, creating a sense of a glass ceiling for those in individual contributor roles.

But that’s not the full story. Let’s break it down by company types:

• Startups

• Digital native scale-ups / unicorns / grown-ups like Grab (Southeast Asia), Doctolib (Europe), and Stripe, OpenAI… (US)

• Big Tech: Google, Meta, Amazon…

• IT consulting & services: from local firms to global players like Accenture or Tata Consultancy Services

• Traditional SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises): local or regional companies where tech supports (not drives) the business

• Traditional MNCs (Multinational Corporations): large global businesses where tech is typically not the core but also supports the business

The first three categories, let’s call them “Tech-Driven Companies”, usually value expertise more clearly. But even there, being a great expert isn’t only about deep technical skills.

The last three - I will call them “Tech-Supporting Business Companies” - often offer clearer career advancement and pay rises for management paths, not expert ones. This can frustrate the strong Individual Contributors among you.

➡️ In future newsletters, we’ll explore how to build a fulfilling, high-impact career on either path.

But let’s start here: what motivates you?

Not your current frustrations or paycheck. If both paths offered equal compensation and recognition… Which would you choose?

The Management Path:

• You feel personally responsible for helping others grow.

• You enjoy system-level thinking - combining tech, business, culture, and people - and designing / enabling how teams work together to deliver impact..

• You're willing to spend time aligning teams, resolving frictions across organizational silos, and navigating organizational dynamics.

• You find yourself reading more on leadership, communication, or team dynamics than coding or developing hard skills in your domain.

The Expertise Path:

• You believe people should grow themselves but you feel fulfilled when mentoring those who ask.

• You understand well the “big picture” of the company but enjoy most deep diving and resolving technical challenges in your field: data, security, software, product, architecture…

• You like cross-team collaboration, but prefer to spend energy building, not realigning people's priorities (this is your manager's job 🙂).

• You often spend free time hands-on, exploring labs, tinkering, or reading technical blogs more than books or blogs on soft skills. Experimenting with tools, frameworks, or languages energize you.

🧭 Important Truth: There’s no better path in itself, only the one that suits your values and energy.

But here’s the risk:

• Choosing management just for recognition might trap you in a mid-level role where you’re not thriving as you may not be able to go up further in management.

• Staying on the expert path without evolving might limit your influence and visibility.

To thrive as an expert, it’s not enough to keep up with tech. You may have noticed from what I listed above in the Expertise path, you also need:

• To mentor others,

• Understand the business context,

• Communicate your impact and develop soft skills,

• And work well in collective, cross-functional teams.

These are soft power skills, and we’ll cover them in depth as I write more newsletters week after week.

“Can’t we be both?”

Great question. Some companies - especially tech-driven ones - look for hybrid profiles: hands-on technical visionaries who also lead. Think Staff+ Engineers or Product-minded CTOs.

In 27 years of tech, I’ve seen only one person truly master both at the highest level (Group CTO) — and yes, it was impressive.

But that’s rare. You don’t need to be Master Yoda. However, you can be a very good VP of Engineering managing teams but with still very strong technical skills. Or a senior Principal Engineer who is respected by all for your technical expertise but also your empathy when mentoring others and communication skills. What matters is:

• Not feeling stuck.

• Growing in your own way.

• Staying flexible - because paths can cross or evolve over time. Maybe not in your current company but in your next professional chapter as you progress in your path. 

As a matter of fact, a reader reached out to me last week after reading my newsletter: he told me that at some point in his career he had a hard choice to make. A few years ago, his manager back then told him he was a super good individual contributor with a senior experience, but that he had to switch to management if he wanted to see his salary increase. What did he decide? He decided to become a freelance expert. More risky yes, but he never had regret on this as he is thriving now. Another path! 

“Be like water, my friend.”

🙏 Your turn: Where are you on your journey? Would you lean toward management or technical mastery — if you truly had the choice? What’s your biggest challenge in making that choice?

Just reply to this email. I read everything and would love to hear from you.

Also, feel free to follow me on LinkedIn where I share more insights, short takeaways, and behind-the-scenes updates.

May you find your path and shine ✨

From Geek to Star, by Khang | “The Way Forward”