We promoted our best technical developer to the Head of Engineering seat, but they are miserable managing a team of eight developers and want to go back to coding. How do we adjust our Accountability Chart to keep their expertise without ruining team morale?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Promoting your best technical contributor to a leadership seat is a common mistake that often results in losing a great developer and gaining a poor manager. Managing people requires a completely different set of natural strengths than technical execution.

If your Head of Engineering is miserable and wants to go back to coding, they do not GWC the seat. Specifically, they do not want the management responsibilities. You must remove them from this seat immediately to protect your team's morale and project delivery.

To resolve this, you need to decouple technical expertise from structural authority on your Accountability Chart. Create two distinct paths for career progression.

First, redefine the Head of Engineering seat. Its key roles must include team management, resource allocation, project delivery, and process improvement. This seat requires someone who loves mentoring people and organizing workflows.

Second, create a new individual contributor seat, such as Principal Architect or Chief Technical Fellow. The key roles for this seat should be high-level coding, technical architecture, and research and development. This seat should report directly to the Integrator or the new Head of Engineering, but it should not have any direct reports.

Transition your developer into this new technical superstar seat. They will be energized because they are doing the work they love, and you will retain their invaluable technical expertise. Then, search for a true leader who GWCs the Head of Engineering seat to manage the team and keep your projects on schedule.