Ask HN: Getting back into an IC role as a manager

I've been in senior manager and director roles for the last 7 years. I miss coding at work and have enjoyed the coding I've been doing outside of work a lot more than anything substantial I've done as a manager. However, I also increasingly feel that my concrete tech chops are getting outdated or are just fading away. I used to be an excellent full-stack Rails engineer in full control of anything from AWS infrastructure to DB, Rails app server and front end. I am increasingly tempted to take a substantial, temporary pay cut moving back into an IC role. However, that would need to be at a different company, since I have zero interest working on anything my current employer has.

Has anyone made this jump back into an IC role? How did you find a role? What did you do to get the role?

Edit: Most importantly: Would you do it again?

You may consider switching to an architect track. An architect is still considered an IC in that one does not _manage_ people. But one still is a leader and a "multiplier" of value, because the designs enable multiple engineers to build large solutions. Architects solve technical problems, and often are expected to code the initial or the most important parts of their solutions. This role is sometimes called "staff engineer" or "principal engineer".

I jumped from senior management track to architect track. Moreover, I consciously used the stint in management as a "trampoline" to a senior architect position, which helped both politically and in terms of the crucial soft /business skills I had acquired. This may or may not be a viable path, depending on a company.

I switched from managing a team of 20ish to becoming a Solutions Engineer (other job titles are Sales Engineer, Solutions Architect).

It's pretty common to see ex-managers in this role because you still need to deal with people, but it's generally a much less stressful job than being a manager. You never need to lay anyone off, and you don't have to worry about others dropping the ball as much.

The way I found the role was through a hacker news job posting, however, my strategy was to focus on jobs where my industry, non-technical experience would be helpful. In this situation, I used to manage a team of engineers for an online virtual events company, so I applied for a job where I'd be helping the sales team sell to other online virtual events companies. Because I used to be the customer (as the manager), I had a lot of emotional contexts that someone who hadn't worked in that industry before didn't have.

I got pretty much the same pay too. There will always be a shortage of engineers who are happy to talk on the phone with a customer.

For inspiration: https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/mitchell-s-new-role-at-hashic...