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> It's obvious that your current bosses think that you can't manage a team. That's not obvious at all to me. It's also possible that they think he's such a goo

> It's obvious that your current bosses think that you can't manage a team. That's not obvious at all to me. It's also possible that they think he's such a good developer that he's more valuable to them as a developer than as a manager. > Techies believe that the best way to management is to show how great they know their area of expertise. No, that won't get you into management. That's how I got into management: I was a good developer who showed a lot of initiative in getting stuff done, and someone higher up noticed my work and pushed me into a management position. Most of the technical management positions in my company got filled that way. I'm not saying that this is the ideal way to find managers, but it seems to be common, in my experience. (I'm no longer a manager; I decided after several years that I was happier as a developer.)

nilkn 7y ago
Management is a very high leverage activity, hiring good managers externally is really hard (harder than hiring developers), and my experience as a manager (and manager of managers) is most developers don't want to do it (your post is an example of that!). So, if a developer is really enthusiastic about wanting to take on a management role and is being turned down, I think there are three reasonable conclusions: (1) there is no management position available; (2) this person is a very senior developer (staff or higher); or (3) there's not much confidence this person's skill set would transfer into managing a team successfully. (1) doesn't seem to be the case here, and while I can't rule out (2) there's also nothing in the OP's post that suggests he or she is in such a high-level engineering position.