David Heinemeier Hansson

The world is full of talented, capable people who'd rather put their own efforts to direct use than manage others. But the natural inclination is to promote senior contributors up a managerial ladder, and out of the trenches. This often ends poorly, turning the promotion into a punishment.

When promotions become punishment

<p>Truly if you are worth promoting in careers that are not about managing other people and appeasing your media-induced need for power trips, you should actually be extremely hesitant to take the promotion at all but do it because “if not me, then who?” informed by prior bad management experiences that all should have some experience of because you probably should have work experience outside your career track (suicide to include on a tech resume it seems. Maybe more devs need to work HR department roles with equal reluctance to management roles, then maybe a single developer wouldn’t have to float an entire team with great credentials but zero work ethic)</p>


<p>I once was offered ‘a really cushy job’ where I didn’t have to develop, but would have to manage a team of offshore developers and review the quality of their code all day. Even thinking about it now makes me die a little bit inside.</p>
