[mithusingh32]

I was always looking for a mentor. I joined a website for LoL that wanted to update it's website to a modern framework. Initially there were 2 senior web devs and about 3 "junior" devs.

After about 3 months of learning react and picking the seniors brain about web dev, they stepped away due to IRL things. So I volunteered to step up as a lead.

I had maybe 3 months of total web dev experience. But stepping up as a lead forced me to learn quicker, and having junior ask me questions helped me learn quicker as well. For example I could always just give them a stack overflow link, but that's no use because they probably did and didn't understand it. So I tried to break it down for them which meant I had to learn the concept to explain it to them.

[throwaway4233]

I would give my opinion on 2 things:

1. The experience you might get as a IC or an individual contributor will be very valuable as a lead/manager since you might already have had experienced the people/technical problems brought to you from the other side of the table.

2. It is very hard to go down the ladder or it will be a question most often asked later down when you interview elsewhere.

I wish you good luck with what you are doing. Taking initiative to lead takes courage and being selfless.