every engineering career hits a fork: lead people, or stay in the code.
every engineering career hits a fork: lead people, or stay in the code.
Each episode goes deep with one Senior Python or Django Engineer, Manager, Founder or Maintainer on the choice that everyone faces: lead people, or stay in the code.
We'll talk about the moment they hit the fork, what they chose, what they gave up, and what they'd tell anyone standing at the same crossroads today.
Most career advice for engineers is based on progression, salary and a new job title. People or Code is about the decision making behind taking a new role.
Somewhere while you are doing the job of a Senior Developer, every career hits the same fork: take the path that leads people, or take the one that stays in the code.
Nobody warns you it's coming, and nobody tells you what it costs either way. Each episode of People or Code is an honest conversation with someone who's been there. We'll discuss what brought forward the question for them, what they actually chose and why, and most importantly whether they'd choose it again...
If you're a senior engineer standing at that fork, or someone who's already chosen and isn't sure you got it right. This is for you.
It's also for the engineering leaders hiring those people, and anyone who's ever wondered whether the management ladder or the IC ladder is the one worth climbing.
Subscribe and watch: People or Code.
Hi, I'm Jon and I run Foxley Talent, and the host of the People or Code Podcast.
I made a choice the same shape as the one this show is about earlier in my recruitment career.
I moved from doing the job myself into managing teams who did it, I worked my way up the ladder and drifted into strategy roles before I eventually got back in the weeds on my own terms.
I'm not an engineer, but I stood at an identical career fork. That's most of why this exists.
Falling in love with recruitment in 2008, building and leading a team, the promotion that pulled him away from the work he loved, the phone call that made him realise how far he'd drifted, and the road back to doing the job on his own terms at Foxley Talent.
Brady became obsessed with code at 11 after printing his first Hello World and has been building with Python and Django ever since. Now he's a Tech Lead at NearForm and about to welcome his first direct report.
