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Individual Contributor Role vs Manager Role
In this blog, I will bring out the differences between the role of individual contributor and a Manager. These differences should help you to understand what change occur when you transition to Manager role for the first time.
Even today, many individual contributors wonder why Management is difficult? How life will change after taking on Managerial role? Will I be able to code? Will I enjoy being Manager? etc. etc.
There are so many blogs, YouTube videos that answers these questions. But still the questions are asked. So, I thought why not share my thoughts on these questions by bringing difference between these roles.
Who is an individual contributor? An individual contributor (IC) is an employee who is responsible for performing specific tasks or function in the organisation.
Who is a Manager? A Manager is an employee who is responsible for administering group of employees, referred as Team.
Let’s see how the roles and responsibilities differ.
#1 Team Management
This is an obvious difference. The individual contributor is always part of a team and gets assigned tasks.
Team management is the responsibility of the Manager. The allocation of members in the team to specific tasks, helping them to complete it on time and helping the members to grow in their career is the responsibility of a Manager.
In some cases Individual contributors confuse team management as Technical Mentorship — both of these are different roles. A manager may or may not do technical mentorship, but an individual contributor can always do technical mentorship to other team members, without having any direct reporting members.
#2 Accountability
An individual contributor is accountable for the assigned tasks and its outcome only.
But a Manager is accountable for all the team member tasks outcome and overall team performance.
In some cases, a Manager can be questioned even if one team member’s task outcome is not as expected.
