At weak engineering companies, senior developers are moved into managing roles because (I believe) the company culture doesn't believe engineers truly provide value. In the traditional model, value is built by supervising larger numbers of people and contributing to more projects. To justify your salary, you have to be "in charge" of more people. It's a traditional hierarchy.
At strong engineering companies, they understand that some engineers are multiple times more productive than other engineers and that those people provide real value. So, people who are good at organizing and directing work are moved (not necessarily promoted) to roles ensuring product delivery while people who are good at hacking keep hacking. The delivery guys aren't necessarily "above" the developer guys. In fact, sometimes it's the opposite.
That's a good way to organize things because it ensures that people do the work they're best at and that the whole system is a meritocracy.
But it's rarefied air at the top of the senior engineer ladder. If you want to get paid $200k/year to write code, you have to provide close to equal value to 4 (very smart) recent grads at $50k/year. Not everyone can do that, so for a lot of engineers shifting to a more supervisory role that more strongly leverages their experience is a more economically viable proposition.
At weak engineering companies, senior developers are moved into managing roles because (I believe) the company culture doesn't believe engineers truly provide value. In the traditional model, value is built by supervising larger numbers of people and contributing to more projects. To justify your salary, you have to be "in charge" of more people. It's a traditional hierarchy.
At strong engineering companies, they understand that some engineers are multiple times more productive than other engineers and that those people provide real value. So, people who are good at organizing and directing work are moved (not necessarily promoted) to roles ensuring product delivery while people who are good at hacking keep hacking. The delivery guys aren't necessarily "above" the developer guys. In fact, sometimes it's the opposite.
That's a good way to organize things because it ensures that people do the work they're best at and that the whole system is a meritocracy.
But it's rarefied air at the top of the senior engineer ladder. If you want to get paid $200k/year to write code, you have to provide close to equal value to 4 (very smart) recent grads at $50k/year. Not everyone can do that, so for a lot of engineers shifting to a more supervisory role that more strongly leverages their experience is a more economically viable proposition.