Engineer, marketer, manager?

So I’m at a point in my professional life that I start to wonder about the future, specifically about what’s next. I’ve been working as an embedded software engineer for 5 and something years and the road has been full of fun, accomplishments, deceptions, bugs, late nights and in general terms I’ve liked it all. I know that I don’t know a lot, according to what I have planned for myself I’ve yet to come up with a great engineering idea that could be patented, I also would like to learn more about motor control, I also would like to understand RTOS and software architectures better, and, being a curious fellow, a lot of other things. But I also think that it would be great fun to get to lead a team of engineers. I’ve done it before (my previous job) and it was great fun, but I also started to miss the technical side of things, and once I got to my current job I really started to have fun again with the technical stuff. There’s also this other side of me that aches to be able to have a deeper impact on the definition of future products my company makes, something more related to technical marketing. In all these possibilities I allow my thoughts dwell sometimes. I know I cannot just become a marketer or a manager because I want to, there would need to be a job opening of some sort, I would need to be considered for that job, etc., and given the state of the economy, that may not happen for some time, still, I know an opportunity may eventually come up in some of those realms, maybe switch to another technical position, maybe a more manager type or marketer type of position.

There are other factors, what about the salary? As a manager I would expect to earn more, and that is also something to consider, how about working hours and how that would affect my personal life, would I be willing to put in what is needed for a position of more responibility? I’ve done it before, and I know I can do it, but, do I want to? What about becoming less technical, that also raises the question, what if the economy takes another downturn further down the road and less managers or marketers are needed, would I be eligible for a technical position again? Would I get another chance? These are thoughts that come to me at my almost 28 years of life. I still havent an answer, ultimately I believe that good opportunities, in any part of life are usually worth taking the risk, not to mention the fact that these things are what make life interesting. What do you think? Are you also thinking about these issues? Have you already been through this? Comment away!

One last note, the Virtual Freescale Technology Forum is over this week, but the recordings for the sessions will still be available after this week, you should definitely take a look.