Roy Tang

Someone on quora asked:

What is “moving into management” that apparently comes after being a Senior Software Engineer?

If the person is doing well, you want to reward him/her with either a raise or a promotion or both. But to justify a raise/promotion, there is also a perception that you will need to take on additional responsibilities as well. And for many companies, they will reach a point where they are unable to assign further technical responsibilities to a senior developer. At this point, they may consider moving the developer into management. This usually means taking on project management tasks - monitoring the work of other people, managing schedules, trying to help the team meet the schedules/deadlines, resolving conflicts within the team, coordinating and assigning work, etc. Many developers won’t have the skills for these tasks and thus many will also be unhappy doing this kind of work. Many will still prefer to keep one foot in the technical side - this means still doing some of the dev work while also taking on management tasks. Some developers who value status or adjustment may prefer moving on to management.