It’s part of an effort to have dedicated managers and dedicated engineers instead of hybrid roles.
This is being sold as an efficiency win for the sake of the stock price but it’s really just moved a few people around with the TLMs now 100% focused on programming.
If you were in a growing domain, and the TLM stayed engaged with the code it worked really well, but as soon as one of those failed it was a bad roi for the company and a pretty terrible experience for everyone. the juniors were never getting promoted since there was only room for 1 expert on the small domain. The TLM was just chilling getting 5-10% raises a year without going outside of their little kingdom, but making sure their domain worked well.
As their junior got better they coded less but their juniors couldn't grow as long as they were there because the niche didn't need that many people.
I don't think its a coincidence that all these companies eliminated these rolls after 2022. When you have unlimited money and massive headcount growth these roles can exist and give your good but not exceptional people room for career growth. At static headcount, you basically need to do what banks do -- yearly cuts or no one can be promoted or hired.
Given a fixed headcount, you can't have frequent promotions without either personnel turnover or allowing for employees to be routinely demoted.
If you are in a bad position then change, but if you like the company and role, don’t take it for granted and think carefully.
This advice is consistent with the broad statistic if more than half of the sample is currently in “bad position”.
Does anyone stay in the same position/team for more than two or three years even at the same company?