IC or Manager? The Question Every Senior Designer Eventually Faces

The offer to manage a team, and the hesitation that followed.

The offer came casually, almost as an aside in a one-on-one: “Have you thought about managing a team?” I said I’d think about it, and then spent the next three weeks genuinely unsure why I was hesitating. I liked the people I’d be managing. I respected the person offering it. And still, something in me resisted saying yes immediately, and it took a while to figure out what that something actually was.

What the IC track actually looks like at senior+ levels

Individual contributor (IC) tracks at senior and above aren’t just “doing the same work but being better at it.” At the higher IC levels, the job becomes about setting direction and raising the bar across a team or product area without formal authority — through influence, craft, and the credibility of consistently good judgment. You’re still hands-on, but your reach extends well past your own output through mentorship, review, and the example you set.

What the management track actually looks like

Management is a genuinely different job, not a promotion of the same job. Your success is tied to your team’s growth and output, not to your individual craft. A huge portion of the week goes to one-on-ones, hiring, performance conversations, and organisational navigation — work that’s real and valuable, but categorically different from designing. Some people find this energising. Others find that the thing they loved about design — the actual making of things — has quietly disappeared from their calendar.

Questions worth asking yourself honestly

What actually energises you day to day? Not what sounds impressive in a promotion conversation, but what you find yourself gravitating toward when no one’s watching — solving a specific design problem, or helping someone else grow and unblocking their work?

What are you willing to give up? Management, done well, usually means less hands-on craft time, at least for a while. IC tracks at the top usually mean less direct authority over people's decisions, even while your influence over direction can be just as large.

What does “success” mean to you, specifically? Some people measure success by what they personally made. Others measure it by what their team became capable of because of them. Neither is more legitimate than the other, but conflating them is how people end up in a role that doesn’t actually fit what they value.

Busting the myth that management is the only way to grow

A lot of organisations, even well-intentioned ones, still structure their ladders so that management looks like the “real” promotion path, while senior IC tracks feel like a consolation prize. This is changing at more companies, but it’s worth being honest with yourself about whether you’re being pulled toward management because you actually want it, or because it’s the only visible path to more scope, compensation, or seniority at your current company. If it’s the latter, the more honest fix might be to advocate for a stronger IC ladder, or to find an organisation that already has one — not to take a management role you don’t actually want.

How to try before you fully commit

A few lower-stakes ways to test the waters before committing to a full management role: formally mentoring a junior designer with real accountability for their growth, leading a cross-functional project where you’re coordinating people rather than just making things yourself, or shadowing a manager through a full one-on-one cycle and a hiring process to see the actual texture of the work, not just the title.

Closing thought

I eventually said yes to trying management on a trial basis, with an explicit agreement that I could step back if it wasn’t right for the team. That safety valve mattered more than I expected; it turned a high-stakes identity decision into something closer to a genuine experiment. There’s no universally right answer between IC and management. There’s only an honest one, arrived at by actually testing your assumptions about what you’d be giving up and what you’d be gaining, rather than deciding based on which path looks more impressive on paper.

If you’ve made this choice — either direction — what’s the thing you wish someone had told you honestly before you decided?

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