The Principal Path: Journeying from Management to Individual Contributor
Summary
As UX teams scale, how might we evolve the careers of veteran individual contributors who feel compelled to go into management to advance or lead? Often we view management as the only option to lead others, be impactful, and grow their careers. There is an opportunity for talented ICs and their orgs to embrace UX leadership outside of management, leveraging their intuition and leadership skills to build better products faster. Edward Cupps will leverage his experience over this past 18 months, having moved from Director to Principal, to highlight the possible challenges, opportunities, and rewards of such a role for scaling teams and individuals.
Key Insights
-
•
The traditional UX career path often pushes talented individuals into management even when their passion is design.
-
•
Balancing management and individual contributor work is unsustainable and can lead to burnout.
-
•
Leadership is influence and passion, not equivalent to management or formal authority.
-
•
Individual contributor leadership roles, such as principal designers, provide a parallel path for career advancement.
-
•
Successful principal IC leaders influence product vision and strategy without managing people directly.
-
•
Managers and principal IC leaders can partner closely, delegating important tasks and coaching together.
-
•
Transitioning from management to IC leadership requires letting go of direct reports and control over team processes.
-
•
Companies benefit from developing parallel career ladders to retain and empower senior IC leaders.
-
•
Creative leadership fuels passion and can create more impact than traditional management for some UX professionals.
-
•
Senior ICs often build extensive cross-functional networks and influence beyond their immediate teams.
Notable Quotes
"When people are in their element, they connect with something fundamental to their sense of identity, purpose, and well being."
"Leadership is not management. It never has been."
"Leadership is influence. You can influence people without being the person who signs off on their vacation requests."
"I was doing all the things, and it wasn’t sustainable."
"The kind of leadership I was craving was creative leadership, not people management."
"Managers don’t have to go it alone; principal ICs can be key partners for coaching and strategic initiatives."
"Switching sideways from management to principal IC was a leap of faith but ultimately gave me more impact."
"A principal has built a boat on their own and rode it around the world—demonstrating autonomy and expertise."
"I was no longer a point person in recruiting or shaping the team, but that was okay."
"The wider base of leaders from IC paths will help drive product priorities and give ICs something to reach for."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"We have never played together before and never rehearsed, yet we pulled off a great rendition spontaneously."
Jim KalbachJazz Improvisation as a Model for Team Collaboration
November 6, 2017
"A really strong book has to be designed as a journey with a consistent voice guiding the reader."
Louis RosenfeldCoffee with Lou: Should You Write a (UX) Book?
March 7, 2024
"I kind of think of it one as like fields of influence — staff influences the team or pillar, principal influences organization-wide."
Catt Small Micah Bennett Brian Carr Jessica HarlleeWhat's Next for ICs: Exploring Staff and Principal Designer Roles
February 22, 2024
"Less than a third of respondents feel like they work somewhere with a clear investment in customer-driven decision making."
Marieke McCloskeyUser Science: Product Analytics & User Research
March 11, 2021
"DeepFakes can look too realistic and might introduce new privacy risks if donor faces come from real people."
Llewyn Paine[Demo] Deploying AI doppelgangers to de-identify user research recordings
June 5, 2024
"If you cannot remove a treatment, it may not be a true cause."
Joshua NobleCasual Inference
October 6, 2023
"Findings are observations with a short shelf life, whereas insights get deep into the why and the consequences."
Sara LogelYour Colleagues are Your Users Too
March 29, 2023
"This is the same conference in so many good ways — good ways are that it’s resilient and there’s a certain steadiness."
Bria Alexander Louis RosenfeldWelcome
January 8, 2024
"Consistency is so important that sometimes even consistency in failure works if it means I only have to learn the workaround once."
Sam ProulxOnline Shopping: Designing an Accessible Experience
June 7, 2023
Latest Books All books
Dig deeper with the Rosenbot
Why is assessing design students challenging, and what are the limitations of traditional grading systems?
What role do templates play in structuring research reports for better repository management and AI parsing?
What is automation bias and how can UX design mitigate its risks in AI-augmented clinical decision support?