Published on 2025-12-26 by Andrew Graham-Yooll

I just asked my boss to demote me. Not because I failed. Not because I was fired. Because after three years as an Engineering Manager, I chose to step back down to Senior Engineer. I’ve never been more certain of a career decision.

I spent the past three years as an Engineering Manager, and every single day I felt the pull toward the code. Not just reviewing PRs or sketching out architecture on whiteboards. I wanted to build. To solve the gnarly problems. To see my name on the commits. To implement the interesting products, not just oversee them from 30,000 feet.

But here’s the thing about being an EM: you’re always in meetings. Strategy meetings. 1:1s. Planning sessions. Stakeholder updates. One-on-ones. Hiring manager screens. My calendar looked like a game of Tetris where every block was painted the same color - blue for meetings. Some weeks I could count on one hand the number of "free hours" I had. And at the end of each day, I’d close my laptop having talked about code without writing a single line of it.

Then my son was born.

Suddenly, the idea of "side projects" became laughable. Who was I kidding? After eight hours of back-to-back meetings and an evening of playing blocks and reading Panda Bear. Panda Bear. What do you see? for the fortieth time, the last thing my brain wanted was to open my IDE. The coding itch I thought I could scratch outside of work? That wasn’t happening. Not anymore. Not for the foreseeable future.

And now we have another kid on the way. Which means a few more years of tough hours and long nights. Which means I had to be honest with myself about what actually motivates me.

The answer was clear: building things. Coding. Solving technical problems. Not managing people - even though I’d gotten pretty good at it.

The Conversation

A few months ago, I sat down with my manager.

"I want to be an engineer again," I told him.

We both knew the reality: you can’t be an effective Engineering Manager and spend 50% of your time in the codebase. The role demands full attention to your people, to strategy, to communication. You can’t half-ass it. So he asked me the question I’d been avoiding:

"Which do you want more?"

I didn’t even have to think about it.

He was supportive. No pressure either way. Just clarity. And honestly, that clarity was a relief. It gave me permission to make the choice I already knew I wanted to make.

The Reality Check

So here I am. I was an Engineering Manager at a higher rung on the ladder. I’ll probably take a pay cut. And I’m moving back to being a Senior Engineer.

The calculator was brutal when I ran the numbers. Maybe $20-30K less per year. With a second kid on the way. Some people think I’m crazy.

But here’s what I keep coming back to: what’s the point of climbing a ladder you don’t want to be on?

The alternative was worse - be a bitter forty-something manager.

Why Not Staff Engineer?

You might be wondering: why not shoot for Staff Engineer? Why "settle" for Senior? At my current org, they are parallel positions.

Because I’ve been out of the daily coding game for three years. I know what I don’t know. I need time to rebuild those muscles - to remember what it’s like to be in the weeds of production incidents at 2am, to own features end-to-end, to debug race conditions that only show up under load.

And honestly? I want something to work toward over the next three years while my kids are young. Senior to Staff feels achievable. It’s a horizon I can actually see. If I jumped straight to Staff, the next rung, Principal, could take 5-7 years or more. I needed a goal that feels attainable while I’m also figuring out how to be a dad of two.

What I’m Not Saying

I’m not saying management is bad. I’m not saying I regret the three years I spent as an EM. I learned a ton about people, about systems, about how organizations actually work. Those skills won’t disappear just because my title changed.

I’m also not saying everyone should do this. Some people thrive in management. Some people love the leverage of working through others. Some people get their energy from building teams instead of building products.

I’m just saying that’s not me. Not right now.

What I Am Saying

I’m saying that it’s okay to change your mind about what you want. It’s okay to step "backward" if backward is actually the direction you want to go. It’s okay to choose fulfillment over prestige, craft over comp, doing the work over directing the work.

Career paths aren’t linear. They’re not supposed to be. The idea that you should always be climbing, always be advancing, always be taking the next rung, that’s not a law of nature. It’s just a story we tell ourselves.

So yeah, I asked for a "demotion." And I’m about to have the best few years of my career. 🤞