You're working as a developer, and one day - BAM, you're offered the chance to lead a team, to step into a managerial or leadership position.

What now? If I accept the offer, will I forget how to code? Will my skills depreciate? Is there a way back to a specialist path? Can I really be a “manager by day, developer by night”? Will I still be a technical person?

Staff Engineer, Engineering manager, Tech Lead manager - what do these titles actually mean, and what scopes of responsibility and management models potentially lie behind them?

Questions multiply and branch off, and the answers contain too many "it depends."

I've been at this point! At Atlassian, I undertook an experiment and moved from a senior developer position to a manager role for 15 months... and then I went back to coding.

I'll talk about my transition from developer to manager, my doubts, my new skills, and how the organization of work changed. What potentially hides behind the job titles with "manager" in them? Also, about returning to coding and the added value from my experiment.

Will my experience help you make a decision if you're facing one - I don’t know. But it will be food for thought 🙂