Do you "owe" your employees a career path? In a word, no. But having a career path is something you can pitch to prospective employees as an additional reason

Do you "owe" your employees a career path? In a word, no. But having a career path is something you can pitch to prospective employees as an additional reason for working at your company. Besides that, the jump from "lead engineer" to "frontline manager" should be something that's not just "be at the right place at the right time" or "sucking up to the right upper level manager" I think corporations universally handle this transition poorly, probably due to looking at people as "human resources".