Is your engineering org top-heavy?

Why this comparison is fair

Both sides of the comparison describe the same population: senior people who could plausibly be in a management role (managers, tech leads, senior/staff ICs). Junior and mid-level ICs are out of scope on both sides -- count them in and the comparison breaks. This reads company structure, not individual performance. A skew is not a verdict on your people, it is a prompt to ask why the shape looks the way it does.

Source & method

The 69% / 21% baseline is computed from ELC's own member base (Attio "ELC Members" list), verified 2026-08-03. Not a survey panel, not an industry report -- the actual composition of a large working engineering-leadership community across Prague, Brno, Bratislava and Kraków. The same member records sit behind our field guide to what engineering leadership means in Central Europe, and behind our count of how differently the same job gets titled, and behind the count of engineering managers in whether an engineering manager needs coaching yet, and behind the finding that Heads and Directors of Engineering outnumber VPs four to one in how to become a CTO.