What happens to developers who never go into management?
&gt; For example, people often assume that any talented developer will end up becoming a manager.<p>I believe this thinking is harmful for this Industry.<p>While there is some overlap between a manager and software dev they are in the end two fundamental different jobs.<p>Sure having some understanding of software is helpful as a manager but IMHO this only includes skills up to the &quot;mid&quot;&#x2F;&quot;just after junior&quot; software dev level.<p>Sure as software dev you also need to have some resource management skills (some time management, and some potential team lead skills) but as a manger you need much much more of this skills and apply them in many more ways.<p>So if a senior software developer becomes a manager it&#x27;s wasting their potential as software developer. Similar a excellent manager doesn&#x27;t need _any_ programming skills, only some understanding of the programming job and it&#x27;s hurdles (which might be simplest to learn by doing programming for a few years, but there could be much more efficient ways to learn this).<p>So IMHO if you want to go into the management path its best to start early on, and end up there around the time you reach a mid-level skill set or earlier.<p>Similar don&#x27;t push senior engineers into management positions, being very good in one doesn&#x27;t entail doesn&#x27;t entail being good in the other.<p>Also please don&#x27;t go around spreading bs like &quot;if a older software dev isn&#x27;t a manager yet they are incompetent and shouldn&#x27;t be hired&quot;.<p>Our industry needs more old software dev, through only such ones which continue to learn and improve their skills. Not such ones which stagnated in the past.