[poulsbohemian]

Sounds like he did it right. Age and experience don't have to be a barrier, in fact it can work well. The young / new person likely has lots of excitement about their new role and will hustle hard to do right by their team. The more experienced person is in a position to put their expertise to work without the operational overhead of being in the coordinating role of team lead.

When I was in my first management role, I was in a similar situation. One of the best compliments of my professional career was when a much older team member said that I'd helped him reinvent his career by the work I'd helped him take on. If we're all humble and honest with each other, these kinds of age / experience gaps can be good for everyone.

[entee]

This. Management is harder than many, especially junior, engineers think. The key is that you have to intrinsically want to do right by your team, sublimating your ego for the greater good of the whole. Not everyone does, and to me that’s table stakes for management, it means the person has the raw material to be a decent manager. That said it’s not sufficient. The hard part is trading off the team needs and desires versus the larger strategic imperatives. That and resolving conflicting priorities within the team.

Still, “doing right by the team” is distressingly not universal, or even when present, many don’t actually know how.