Agree in spirit but I think the magnitude (and meaning) of that can only be done on the job, not academically. And of course herein is the problem. It's compan

Agree in spirit but I think the magnitude (and meaning) of that can only be done on the job, not academically. And of course herein is the problem. It's company by company but what we built at my last one is built a hybrid role that allowed people to "try" being a manager without negatively affecting their own career timeline, or others. We defined the role as one where you were effectively a manager, but had clear oversight from your manager (who had to agree to this to start). You can figure out all of those definitions easily enough, the big one was in the promotion/leveling guides it didn't penalize you for going down this road and switching back to being an IC. I think that's actually one of the biggest gotcha's is that it is perceived as either an ego or career hit (or worse both) to flip back that no one does and people try to grit it out. And no one wins. It has to be company specific implemented but I think we should all be advocating for "interim" types of this role for 1st time managers.