Your Senior Dev Doesn’t Want to Be a Manager. Now What?
You have a strong dev. Maybe your best. They don’t want to “move up” into people management, even when it’s the only ladder in sight.
Technical leadership needs its own track. You keep your best builders, and you give them space to grow.
At our startup, we lean into this.
Staff Engineer isn’t a fallback for people who don’t want to manage. It’s a serious leadership role. They drive architecture decisions. They unblock teams. They mentor across squads. They kill blockers before they hit the roadmap. Their impact echoes beyond their own commits.
We also built a “product engineer” role—a hybrid, outcome-focused dev who knows more than one platform and always asks:
“What problem are we solving for the user?”
This is a natural jump for senior devs who want influence, but not direct reports. They connect dots between product, UX, and engineering. They see the big picture, and their reach multiplies.
Every time I see a senior dev move into one of these roles, I watch their impact explode. They become “the glue”. They stick around. They do their best work, not because they manage people, but because they move the company forward.
That’s how you unlock their true potential. Don’t waste it.