EM, Tech Lead or IC?
Two weeks in, Meera joins a design review and hears herself arguing with Farhan about how to structure the payments database. She wins, and the room goes quiet. Afterwards Farhan asks her, fairly: "If you're deciding the design, what am I for?"
The rule
The IC builds it, the tech lead shapes it, the EM builds the team.
Three roles often sit on the same team. Titles vary between companies, but the split of ownership usually looks close to this:
| Role | Owns | Judged by |
|---|---|---|
| Individual contributor (IC) | Their own tasks: code, designs, reviews | The quality and impact of their work |
| Tech lead | The technical direction of the team's work: approach, design, quality bar | Whether what the team builds is sound |
| Engineering manager (EM) | People, delivery health, team process, links with other teams | Whether the team delivers and grows |
- An IC is not the same as a junior. Priya is a senior IC whose design reviews shape the whole payments system. Many companies have an IC track that rises to staff and principal engineer with no direct reports at all.
- A tech lead still writes a good share of the code. Farhan breaks features into pieces, chooses approaches with the team and sets the bar for code quality. He usually has no direct reports.
- An engineering manager has direct reports: Meera runs their one-on-ones, reviews and hiring. She stays technical enough to ask sharp questions, but she is rarely the one writing the critical code.
Management is a different job, not the next rung above senior engineer. People move between the two tracks in both directions, and a good career can stay on either one.
The shortcut
For any question, ask: "Is this about one piece of work, about how the system is built, or about the people and conditions?" One piece of work goes to the IC doing it. How the system is built goes to the tech lead. People and conditions go to the EM.
"How should this function handle a gateway timeout?"
One piece of work. Arjun, who is writing it, decides, and asks Farhan if he is unsure.
The trap for a new manager is to keep acting as the tech lead. It hollows out Farhan's role, turns Meera into a queue that every design must wait in, and leaves the people work, which only she can do, undone.
Drills
Answer fast — trust the rule.
Who normally runs a team member's performance review?
Priya wants more impact but does not want to manage people. What is the best advice?
Meera overrules Farhan's database design because she knows the old code best. What is the main risk?
Which task most clearly belongs to the tech lead?
Remember
- The IC builds it, the tech lead shapes it, the EM builds the team.
- Route each question: one piece of work, how the system is built, or people and conditions?
- The trap: a new manager who keeps acting as tech lead becomes the team's bottleneck.