At Skyscanner, we take the career aspirations of our teams seriously, which is why we have spent a to n of time building our two distinct engineering

Maker to Manager — How We Support New Leaders

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2021-05-30 23:00:07

At Skyscanner, we take the career aspirations of our teams seriously, which is why we have spent a to n of time building our two distinct engineering paths; individual contributor (IC) or manager. Advancing your career as an IC is seen as a linear progression; going from Senior Software Engineer to the next level of Principal Engineer, for example, is a promotion within Skyscanner. It’s a brand new role as you take on more ambiguous technical problems and have a wider impact within the business. In fact, if you want to know more about that IC path you can read this blog from the awesome Nicky Wrightson (https://medium.com/@SkyscannerEng/finding-the-steps-on-the-individual-contributor-ladder-8ec60e11fb46).

The management track is slightly different. When anyone becomes a people manager at Skyscanner, we recognise this as a new role, with new responsibilities. As a result, we treat this slightly different than a traditional promotion. We introduce our engineers to their new manager role in the same way we would onboard a brand new hire into the business — with an induction. Therefore we have created a manager onboarding programme specifically designed to help support our engineers who want to “try out” a people management role and grow at their own pace.

As an engineer progresses through our IC framework, the fork in the road from maker to manager usually begins with a conversation with their own line manager. In fact, it’s common that most ICs, at some point become intrigued by manager roles;