Are you ready for a senior IC role?
An IC, which stands for Individual Contributor, indicates a role with no people management responsibilities.
A common career path as an IC starts with a “junior” or “associate” title, advances to “mid” or “professional” and continues with “senior” and then “staff” or “principal” titles. These change from company to company even within the same industry.
In the past and still in some organizations, seniority was obtained after a specific number of years of experience. We have come to learn that a person with 20 years of experience might have remained in their comfort zone and actually experienced the same year 20 times.
Luckily, many organizations have realized that some have no skills or wish to become managers, i.e. having people management responsibilities, and have adopted the “IC track”, where ICs can continue to professionally grow and lead in their own way.
The reason to be promoted to a senior role may be due to actual performance and potential, but also due to opportunistic reasons such as a person threatening to leave, wish to maintain stability in the org, wanting to demonstrate career growth and more.
The criteria for seniority vary, as seen in many career ladders, mostly include higher level of responsibilities and expected impact as well as soft and hard skills.
A while ago I was interviewed on the topic and decided to write about it:
How do you know if you’re ready for a senior IC role?
There is no checklist for promotion even when a career ladder exists. It’s an accumulation of several dimensions — and mostly, when you bring more value, not when you think you deserve it.
You usually don’t know. There are clues, some clearer and more evident than others, and you may have to take a leap and see.
- Actually being told by your manager you are ready (ideally with committing to support)
- Receiving continuous positive feedback, official performance review and additional responsibilities from the manager, ideally with constructive feedback
- If a career ladder is available, compare the expected results and behavior on all dimensions — functional, “soft skills” and values. Then follow the “150% rule”: you do 100% of your current role and 50% of the next role
- Continuously achieved proven results (on time, on budget, quality)
- Actively sought feedback and were given
- Analyzed how other seniors behave and can describe what good looks like
- Contributed in meetings, not only a silent participant: retrospective, priorities, decisions, design, support cases, preparing for upcoming events, etc.
- Facilitated or led meetings, set agendas
- Kept actively learning, applying and growing out of your comfort zone (podcasts, articles, books, courses, conferences, meetups)
- Thought not only about right now, but also about the near future
- Admitted mistakes and looked for the best way to proceed
- Effectively communicated, people understood your intent and you successfully influenced for the benefit of the company, e.g. how to solve a problem, work practices, architecture, priorities, etc.
- Saw conflicts as an evolution of ideas, meritocracy, not “who is right”
- Supported others on the team — pairing, designing, testing, operations, on-call
- Supported other teams
- Gained substantial domain knowledge
- Business understanding (how the business makes money) and customers’ pain
- Solved business problems, rather than looking for self gains, adopting tech for tech’s sake, and any other form of CV-driven decision-making
- Not only did you have an impact on getting tasks done and finding solutions to problems, you also found problems to work on (quality, observability, tech debt, productivity, UX, costs, maintainability)
- Successfully mentored more junior ICs and they became effective and independent over time
You are probably not ready when
- Significant negative feedback or performance review, responsibilities taken away
- Actually being told you are not ready yet, ideally with constructive feedback
- Time just passed doing the same
- You want status/salary/compare to colleagues without increasing your value
- Looked for shiny new tech for CV or tech’s sake
- Focused on self-benefit over the team’s success
- Made things more complicated
- Blamed others and had justifications for faults
- Didn’t volunteer, only the bare minimum
- Missed deadlines, had quality issues, others helped clean up after you
- Waited for others to take the lead, shying away from responsibility
- Complained instead of finding solutions
The most effective approach is to proactively communicate your intent to your manager, get their feedback about gaps, strengths and weaknesses, and develop an individual growth plan to get there.
