I asked 14 engineers their career goals this week.
More than half said management or team lead within two years.
One candidate (currently supervising two junior developers) told me his goal was to lead a large engineering team within two years.
I get the instinct. Management looks like progress. Bigger title, more authority, cleaner answer on a resume.
But the game we’re building at Ara Pay is different. Two engineers with AI tools and real ownership outperform large teams built on headcount and process. The people we need want to go deeper, not wider.
One candidate surprised me.
When I asked about career goals, he said he wanted to be a very good developer. No management mention. No title aspiration. Just the craft.
He explained it simply: he doesn’t enjoy delegating. He’d rather do excellent work himself than coordinate average work across a team.
That answer stood out more than almost anything else I heard that week.
In a room where everyone is chasing the org chart, the person who wants to stay close to the work is the rarest hire.
If you lead hiring: what career goal surprised you most and turned out to be exactly what you needed?
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