[_throwawayyyyyy]

idk about your "anti-labor" strawman here. promoting wholly unqualified internal people who have never managed anyone before and expecting them to take over a high performing team is not a good plan, nor is it "anti-labor". think about the people on the team who have to suffer as this internal candidate learns things that anyone with schooling or training in management would already know. at least send them to a course first or something. "historical context" and "product insight" don't count for anything in an engineering manager. they're not a product designer. that engineering manager should manage engineers, not plan the product. if they want to plan product, pick a C-level position where they can do that and hire a _manager_ externally.

[goatinaboat]

promoting wholly unqualified internal people who have never managed anyone before and expecting them to take over a high performing team is not a good plan, nor is it "anti-labor"

So provide training and mentoring.

We have normalised in our industry that the only way to progress is to job-hop, and it's actually to the detriment of both engineers who have to jump through the ridiculous hoops of interviewing these days, and companies who lose their valuable assets every day.

[realityking]

> We have normalised in our industry that the only way to progress is to job-hop

I share that this is a bad state but I think this situation is an exception. Almost all the engineering managers I know got promoted into management in a company where they held an IC position before. (Almost) nobody hires engineering managers without management experience.

[goatinaboat]

(Almost) nobody hires engineering managers without management experience.

Typical path I see is IC at company A, team lead at company B, manager at company C. Some people do this in entire path in less than 5 years.

[ggm]

this 100+ -The assumption a subject matter specialist who has fulfilled a role can become the C* is a fundamental problem. Everyone thinks it will work. Sometimes it works. Its not a given.

Managers have to learn how to be a manager. Believing anyone can do it ab initio devalues the role.