Is Moving from a Management to an IC Role a Red Flag?

Krissy Manzano: Hello, and welcome to the Blueprint Roundtable. I’m your host, Krissy Manzano, joined by Matt Lewers and Emily Bell today. The Blueprint Roundtable is an ongoing series with our team and occasional guest, and each session we ask the team a simple question related to trends and recruiting talent, and go to market for discussion and debate.

Krissy Manzano: This week’s question is moving from a manager role to an individual contributor role, a red flag?

Matt Lewers: I can take that one for me, no. And I’ve done it multiple times throughout my career. I think it does give a lot of hiring managers pause. A lot of times I hear from clients that they want to know why did the person step down from leadership back to IC? Or why are they trying to get into leadership after not having been in leadership for years.

Matt Lewers: A lot of times there’s assumptions made that it’s due to lack of performance or lack of ability to perform at that level. But in reality, I think there’s a bunch of individuals that have a similar background and myself, where depending on the stage of career I’m at, it’s more advantageous sometimes for me to step back to an IC, in a new organization to move back into leadership or frankly earnings potential is a big driver and work-life balance can also come to place.

Matt Lewers: Emily, I know I’m covering a lot. A lot of things are hopefully not taking too much of your thunder, but I don’t,

Matt Lewers: I’m

Emily Bell: over here nodding. I’m agreeing with all of it, I spot-on.

Matt Lewers: Yeah, I don’t see it as a red I think the question deserves to be asked. But if you don’t have that conversation, then you’ll never know. You have to give an individual opportunity to explain it.

Matt Lewers: Right. As somebody myself who has two kids under four, I don’t know if I could lead a large team right now, I just don’t think I have the bandwidth. My personal life, interferes way too much. And that’s not fair to those individuals that would lean on me. So I’m perfectly fine being in an IC role, even though I’ve been a leader at multiple points in my career, and I aspire to get back into leadership and I’m happy to have that conversation.

Matt Lewers: But as a hiring manager, you have to be willing to have that conversation with a candidate. You can’t just make assumptions that it’s due to lack of performance or motivation or other things.

Krissy Manzano: Yep, totally.

Emily Bell: Yeah, I would agree with that. I mean, I think if, think about it too, I mean especially when you look at the workforce as a whole, I think, just speaking from the millennial point of view we are very much kind of in we’re kind of exiting the early end and we’re now getting into kind of the thick of the middle of our careers, and that means a lot of us have gotten married and we’ve had children, so.

Emily Bell: The career trajectory of the first part right, is can change depending on priorities. So I totally understand, and I always joke, you know, when you’re in leadership, you’re one bad hire away from not hitting OTE. And so, and it really is that simple. So especially from a sales perspective, it totally makes sense why some people would take a step back especially, and that’s not just for the millennial generation, the workforce, I think it applies across all generations currently working today. But I think to have the conversation, chat with the individual. I think the question I would wanna know is if they stepped out, why do they wanna go back in? And really wanting to understand the why behind that. And so I think it’s not necessarily a red flag, but if they’re leaving an organization as an IC and they’re wanting to go to a new organization as a leader, I would have some questions around skillset and how they would approach leading a team again versus if they had basically been an organization left and was still in IC within the new organization and then worked their way to a leadership position again, like that path would seem not necessarily more palatable, but it would make more sense and they would have more recent leadership experience. Like that would really be the biggest question is how long ago were they leaders?

Emily Bell: Because things change very quickly in tech. So, also said a lot, but Krissy, I’d love to hear your thoughts just kind of on how you would approach it.

Krissy Manzano: and I agree with you all. I guess my, there’s like a follow up question to this and it’s why are people so quick to like assume that this is, I mean, we’ve heard it from folks before, like, oh, it’s huge red flag. Like why? And I have some thoughts around this, but just like kind of throwing out another question.

Krissy Manzano: Why do you think people just instantly are like red flag, like no way, won’t have the conversation?

Emily Bell: Have thoughts? I mean, not necessarily controversial, but I mean, I think it, it’s just not common. I think it’s not always ego, right, but it’s not typical when someone has worked very hard at something to accomplish something, to take a step, or a perceived step back, right? When we all know that as an IC in sales, you can in a lot of times, surpass OTE of leadership, depending on hitting accelerators.

Emily Bell: So I think it’s just the perception of it versus it being actually real. And I think if you remove ego away from it and looks at the facts, I think in a lot of ways it shows a very self-aware individual that has a lot of the things that you want in a really good leader, that understands what they can take on and what they can’t, and is able to balance things.

Emily Bell: I mean, that’s really what you want in a leader anyway. So I think if anything it lends towards, you know, the right behaviors. It’s just removing the ego, removing the perception what that means typically, or has traditionally meant, and really talking to the individual and kind of getting a feel for yourself.

Matt Lewers: Yeah. And I’ll project a little bit based on conversations I’ve had in the last couple years. I think there’s more junior leaders or hiring managers, for lack of a better term, that don’t want somebody that’s sat in their seat before because they don’t have all the answers and they’re not gonna be comfortable answering tough questions from somebody who’s sat in the seat before.

Matt Lewers: And so I think they feel, some of them, again, I’m projecting, but I feel that some more junior managers feel, well, this person may be contentious with me because they’re gonna ask questions I don’t have the answers to. And I wouldn’t share with them if I had them. And then the other part I think is another projection again.

Matt Lewers: I think there’s certain people out there that see, oh, they’re stepping back from leadership, so they’re not taking their career as seriously. And I need, you know, most of what we work for early stage tech startups, so they’re like, I need hungry, motivated people that can just beat the drum eight different ways in eight different days.

Matt Lewers: Right. And it’s, if somebody’s stepping back from leadership back to an IC role, they’re admittedly giving up a lot of responsibility, managing others. So I think there’s some concern from a certain aspect of the hiring manager pool out there that feels they’re getting somebody who’s burned out or who can’t manage the high workload and can’t, you know, wear multiple hats anymore.

Matt Lewers: But again, for me, you gotta have that conversation and talk to the person and figure it out. If you start making those assumptions then you’re just, you know, you’re just shutting, you’re shutting down avenues before you’d have a chance to explore themselves.

Krissy Manzano: No, totally. I think, I mean, at that point of like, you’ve gotta have the conversation. And we always say that, right? And when you look at like, there’s a lot of people that, so one, if you get to go into management, what you actually could normally assume is that you did really well in your IC role, right?

Krissy Manzano: Even if there’s things there, like going into management means like you were doing well. There are people that are great ics that should never be managers, right? And sometimes they go into that management role and they realize that. But guess what? Like now they actually see the full picture. I will, I’ll hire those people all day every day, right?

Krissy Manzano: Because, that’s one less adult that I have to, you know, deal. I have two small children under four as well, or four under. Yeah. And you know, I don’t wanna deal with anyone else and their stuff. And so they understand that full picture. Right. And I think also too, part of the reason people project a little bit is because they had an experience with someone that fit that mold.

Krissy Manzano: And I think it’s really easy for us to go, okay, I don’t want that to happen again. So instead of like really looking at that person, I’m now gonna apply this to everybody to keep myself safe. Right? It’s like a protection response thing. And there’s nothing wrong with, that’s just like a natural way for your mind to work.

Krissy Manzano: But this is where, you know, unconscious systematic biases come into play, right? And you have to go, okay, hold on. I can’t say that everyone that’s come from that experience is gonna be bad. That person, if we actually look into like why they weren’t good, it was probably had nothing really to do with them being a manager going to IC. Probably, all about other things and there’s so many people that do that, right? Like there’s not one way, you know, we, I think we look at career and Emily, you said this as like linear, right? Of just or of moving this, that’s not how it is. People change and figure out what they wanna do all the time.

Krissy Manzano: And I think especially since COVID where so many people lost their jobs and realize they could live off of a lot less than they realized. People are like, Hey I want to be happy. And there’s a lot of different avenues to that, especially now for remote work or contract work, all those types of things. So, but

Emily Bell: it, it’s also, there’s so many more current day dual income households where it’s just not the way that it used to be. So having children looks very different compared to probably even our parents’ generation. So you have to make decisions in your career that aren’t always linear because it allows for, a job is basically a means to live your life, if anything. And you’re, you can be lucky enough to work and make money doing something that you’re super passionate about, but for most people it’s a means to live your life. So it’s great to have drive and career, but I think it’s really, there’s more and more emphasis on balance because the family units look so different.

Emily Bell: There’s not going to always be a stay at home parental unit. And you have to make those calls based off of, even if you have the skills to advance your career in various ways, you still at the end of the day have to make sure that it’s all balanced from a family perspective as well. So I think that’s something also to be mindful of, especially if you look at women in leadership.

Emily Bell: Like you have to be willing to kind of understand that people just have to make different choices than what they’ve traditionally made, not to make a complete broad stroke and assumption that it’s like that for everybody, but I think that’s part of it too. It just looks different. The work, climate and environment looks different than it used to.

Emily Bell: So different decisions are made.

Krissy Manzano: Yes. Change is hard, but it’s not bad. We have to evolve, right? What do they say? Cavemen used to drag women by their hair. So you know, evolution is not a bad thing. So, we’re at a turning point in our society. All right, you all, that’s all the time we have for today.

Krissy Manzano: Thanks for joining the Blueprint Roundtable. Until next time, we’ll see you later.

Emily Bell: Bye guys.