Title: I've been a software engineer for over a decade, and worked at huge companies and little startups. I know this probably sounds insane, but over that entire time, I only worked on <i>one</i> team/project where there was a notion of "tech lead", that is to say a technical individual contributor who was responsible for decomposing a project, overseeing the more junior engineers in its implementation, but was not a manager who managed those engineers. And that tech lead was me. Every other team/company I've ever worked at, I've basically been in a team scenario, where everyone worked in their own silos. I've always owned entire subsystems (even as a total newbie, painful as it was), never with another engineer over me, never with another engineer under me. I've had the words "Senior Developer" on my resume for almost 8 years now, over half my career.<p>I don't want to be a manager. But it seems like something's missing, that I don't have any "project leadership" experience on my resume (save that one time, which was a success I might add.) I'm confused about what the next step for me is supposed to be, and how to get there. It seems like the things above me on the career ladder (architect, principal, CTO, what have you) are not attainable because of this absence of leadership experience. I mean, is this something that even exists or am I just imagining it? I see peers (coworkers who eventually moved on to other places) who make these strange leaps from Sr. Engineer to Director or CTO and I don't understand how they did it. Should I just try applying to a higher-up position sometime?<p>I'm open to any and all career advice. This really isn't about money or responsibility, it's just about ensuring that I'm not stalling out somewhere in my professional growth. I guess I'm trying to say that I'm concerned about my long-term trajectory.
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