How Charity Majors' 'Pendulum' essay reshaped one engineer's view of management careers

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A software professional reflects on how Charity Majors' 2017 essay 'The Engineer/Manager Pendulum' changed his perspective on career transitions between engineering and management. The article, published on DEV Community in Portuguese, describes how the author had previously seen management as an unattractive path that would distance him from hands-on technical work. Majors' central argument — that engineering and management are distinct professions one can move between, rather than rungs on a single ladder — made experimenting with management feel far less permanent or risky. In 2018, while living abroad, the author took a structured opportunity to try managing a team, with the option to return to an individual contributor role after six months if the fit was poor. He credits the pendulum framework with making that leap possible by reframing a potential career detour as a reversible and enriching experiment.

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