There's room between "he just wants to code" and management. Primary skills I'd focus on are learning strong communication skills and understanding the business, and dev-ops.
This. Some actual things we all do to improve our value but not become people persons:
Mentoring and training employees with less technical skill.
Reviewing workflow and looking for ways to "work smarter not harder".
Developing tools which help us internally.
Prototyping ideas which could become customer-facing value-adds.
Finding ways separate parts of the business can help each other. One group will do something another group doesn't, how could having that insight help the second group and vice versa?
Mentoring and training employees with less technical skill. Reviewing workflow and looking for ways to "work smarter not harder". Developing tools which help us internally. Prototyping ideas which could become customer-facing value-adds. Finding ways separate parts of the business can help each other. One group will do something another group doesn't, how could having that insight help the second group and vice versa?