After spending my entire career as an engineer, and having spent the last several years leading engineering organizations at Dropbox and Convoy, I jumped into an individual contributor role, as Technical Advisor to Convoy's CEO. A detour into a staff role is unconventional for an engineering leader, so I'll spend some time talking about my motivations for making this move, and also talk about what I've learned so far (spoiler alert: I think I'll be a much more effective engineering leader when I return)