A common mistake, made by companies everywhere, is to reward top engineers by promoting them into management positions. Though this may seem like an appropriate reward for your most productive people, it often backfires, for a variety of reasons: Great engineers love writing code. Changing their job in a way that takes them away from writing code may ultimately decrease their happiness with their work. Once you’ve turned an engineer into a manager, it may be difficult to move them back to an individual engineering role without it feeling like a failure. This transition can be made
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