HACKER Q&A
📣 novemberrain

What career path for a hands-on engineering leader?


For more than seven years, I was the CTO of two mildly successful startups. One achieved the status of scale-up, the other I left after bootstrapping it (build the MVP, hire the core engineering team). Both were in the same space, and I needed to work in a different area after a few years. I have always been a solid and polyvalent engineer, capable of working on the entire stack (backend, frontend, mobile, DevOps/infrastructure). As CTO of relatively small startups (<100 employees), I had a good balance between managerial and hands-on.

I was always frustrated with working with limited means, and I wanted to explore what came next for startups further in their growth. I decided to join a unicorn tech startup as VP of Engineering. The role is hands-off, and I spend a lot of time managing the team, building the engineering and product roadmap, and doing some system design. After a few months in that position, I miss being hands-on: designing and implementing solid and scalable systems and technically leading by example; I love enabling and empowering teams, but I feel a bit bored personally.

I have been thinking about my situation and about how I could keep the same salary level (> £175k) whilst adopting a more hands-on position (possibly without managerial responsibilities). The typical answer for someone based in London, UK, is to move to contracting. I have worked as a contractor before, so I am unsure if those salaries are realistic and where to start. On the other hand, with age, it gets harder and harder to be competitive as a software engineer: is the natural path to move to managerial/architect positions?

I would like to hear from people who faced the same dilemma and what path they chose. I would also love to hear from contractors in the UK.

Many thanks for your help.

  👤 cutthegrass2 Accepted Answer ✓
Had a similar dilemma to you a few years ago, except that my background was predominantly based in large organisations, i'd never worked in a startup or worked for myself as a contractor.

I chose the contract route and was able string a number of contracts together (sequentially) with rates between £750 - £900pd. (annually ~£170k - £205k).

Contracting can be pretty lucrative depending on your PAYE earning potential. I was earning £126k basic (Director, Senior Solutions Architect) in a large banking organisation when I jumped, so the pay increase was significant.

Checking the current rates in my inbox from this week alone, I see CTO level day rates up around ~£1500pd, which is significantly over your target of £175k.

Just be mindful of getting some decent IR35 insurance setup and having a contract assessment by a reputable company to be confident of a status determination should HMRC decide to take a look.

Best of luck

👤 elevanation
Great question. If I may make some suggestions in 3 parts:

Part 1: Present

What are your priorities for the next 5 to 10 years? Consider which are most important to you:

a. Cash

b. Stability

c. Career Building

d. Industry Reputation

Part 2: Future

g. What would you like to be doing 10 years from now?

Part 3: Building Fulfillment

j. Are you good at managing people, to the point that the company benefits? Or would the company be better off if you were in a hands-on role? (you seem to indicate it is the former, just want to emphasise the importance of this item)

k. Are there areas in your personal life where you can enjoy hands-on things?

m. Which area(s) in your personal life merit a bit of investment?

👤 eatonphil
I can only speak for American companies but if you work for American companies (startup or public) you should be able to find staff/principle engineer roles in orgs that allow you to remain hands on and have the same salary caps that VPs or CTOs have.

Every org is different though so it will take some shopping around to find one that fits you well. But I'm positive there are many orgs looking for folks like yourself.