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.
It's just a way to ease unsuspecting engineers into management. If you don't suck at management, your team inevitably grows (or you're handed over other teams), and before long, you're managing full-time.
Which means that there are three type of people who remain TLMs in the long haul: those who suck at management; those managing dead-end projects on dead-end teams; or those who desperately cling on to the engineering past and actively refuse to take on more people. From a corporate point of view, none of these situations are great, hence the recent pushback against TLM roles in the industry.
Inevitably because why?
> those who suck at management
If higher management can figure out not to put more people under them, why can't it figure out to remove the existing people under them?
> those managing dead-end projects on dead-end teams
If "dead-end" just means "not growing" then that sounds fine. When a company does thousands of things only a small fraction of them need to be growing.
> those who desperately cling on to the engineering past and actively refuse to take on more people
"Desperately cling" is a wild way to refer to someone sticking with a job they like. And if they're a TLM it's not the past, it's the present. Wanting to keep your present job is very normal.
And is the end goal to have zero TLMs in this expanded team? If you're going to pick new TLMs to go under the one you push into higher management, what's bad about leaving them in place and putting someone else above them?
> Inevitably because why?
Because proven, effective managers are always in short supply, so when you hire new people, or if any of the existing managers leaves, it's the default pick.
Plus, most people want to make more money over time. And on the management track, this means angling for that director / VP role down the line, even if it wasn't your childhood dream.
> If higher management can figure out not to put more people under them, why can't it figure out to remove the existing people under them?
They can, but in big and / or growing companies, performance problems are addressed less vigorously than they probably should. This cuts both ways: neglecting problems is wrong, but cutthroat performance management makes people cranky too.