Suppose you are hired as a pie eater. You are good at your job, you enjoy eating pie, and you can’t believe someone would pay you to eat pie when you’d be more than willing to eat pie for free.

Some moons later, your manager comes to you and says, “You know Doug, (a random name that just came to my mind) you’re really good at eating pie. How would you like a promotion?”

You’re ecstatic, of course. “Sure boss, I love eating pie. How much more pie would I need to eat?”

“No no no no, you got the wrong idea,” she says, in an almost chiding tone. “Doug, you’re VERY good at eating pie. In fact, you’re probably the best pie eater I’ve ever seen. Heck, you probably eat ten times the amount of pie as Chad over there.” (All fictional names, btw).

“Uh… thanks? So then….” You replied, trailing off with your eyebrows furrowed as if you’ve tasted a new and unsavory flavor of pie.

“Yes, you see, we like your pie-eating ability SO much, that we’ve decided that you should stop eating pie ALTOGETHER. Instead, we’re going to promote you to be the new manager of our Pie division. You’ll be overseeing Chad, Frank, and Emilia over there. We’ll expect that this will DOUBLE our output. Or, more accurately, double our consumption of pie,” explained the boss lady almost breathlessly yet in an even tone. Her gaze drifted above, as if she were striving to physically glimpse the glorious pie-eating future.

“But, boss,” you said hesitantly, after doing some pie calculations, “I currently eat half of all the pies on our team. If I stop eating pies, we’ll halve the number of pies we eat, not double.”

“Well, that’s where you come in, Doug. I think you can coach the rest of the team to eat more pie, and once Chad, Frank, and Emilia learn to eat as much as you currently do, we’ll be doubling out consumption!”

“That’s still only 50% incr…”

“Pish posh, some rounding errors I suppose. Anyhoo, you’ll be starting your new role tomorrow. So finish any crusts you have remaining by EOD today, and if you have any you can’t finish, make sure you write some notes for Chad on how he can eat the rest of it. Oh, and there will be meetings for 4 hours!” she hurriedly remarked as she rushed off to her next meeting.

Moral of the story is, if you’re at a company where the only way to advance in your career is to completely stop what you’ve excelled at and have enjoyed doing to get to that point… and to start doing what you’ve never done before, you’re not actually advancing in your career but taking on a different job altogether. Often times, programmers are promoted to become ‘people managers’ without any training. This isn’t to say becoming a manager is a bad career move - far from it! There will be a lot more opportunities if you have some sort of management experience on your resume. But recognize that it’s more of a career change rather than a continuation as a developer. The majority of skills you’ve accumulated will not translate. There are some companies where you can be a ‘manager doer.’ Those companies are the ones you should look for, if at all possible.