The cursor blinked, a silent indictment on a screen still stubbornly displaying a budget spreadsheet. Six weeks. It had been six long, infuriating weeks since I’d last opened Figma, since I’d felt the tactile satisfaction of shaping a user experience, since I’d actually designed anything. My fingers still twitched, remembering the muscle memory, but the current reality was a thick stack of performance reviews and an email chain about departmental parking spaces. This wasn’t the future I’d envisioned, not when I was the team’s top designer, not when I spent 8 years honing a craft I genuinely loved.

This isn’t just my story, though it feels acutely personal right now. It’s the quiet tragedy playing out in cubicles and glass-walled offices across industries: the promotion that isn’t a reward, but a cleverly disguised punishment. We’ve collectively agreed that ‘up’ means ‘manager,’ and ‘manager’ means ‘success.’ But what if ‘up’ is simply a lateral move to a role you despise, pulling you away from the very work that ignites your passion and made you exceptional in the first place?

The organizational design flaw stares us right in the face, yet we blindly perpetuate it. We take our most brilliant individual contributors-the designers who instinctively understand user flow, the engineers who debug complex systems in their sleep, the strategists who can forecast market shifts with uncanny accuracy-and we tell them the only way to advance, to earn more, to gain respect, is to stop doing the thing they’re best at. We strip them of their specialized tools and hand them a clipboard and a calendar full of meetings. It’s like telling a virtuoso violinist that their next career step is to manage the orchestra’s logistics, never touching a bow again.

I’ve heard the counterarguments, of course. “Leadership skills are crucial.” “Managers mentor others.” “It’s about scale.” And yes, those things are true, for the right people. But not everyone is wired for management, and crucially, not everyone *wants* it. Some of us thrive in the deep work, in the meticulous craft. We are the architects of the tangible, the solvers of the intricate, and our value isn’t measured by how many direct reports we have, but by the quality and impact of our direct contributions.

Take Fatima V.K., for example. I met her at a conference years ago, back when I was still elbow-deep in design sprints. She was an industrial hygienist, one of the best in her field. Her passion was identifying and mitigating workplace hazards – assessing air quality in manufacturing plants, evaluating chemical exposures, understanding the intricate dance of safety protocols. She could spot a potential disaster 8 miles away. She loved the fieldwork, the precise measurements, the tangible impact of protecting lives. She meticulously documented findings, understood obscure regulations, and advocated fiercely for worker safety. Her reports were legendary for their clarity and thoroughness; not a single detail was ever overlooked.

Then came the inevitable. Her company, seeing her expertise and dedication, promoted her to ‘Director of Health & Safety Compliance.’ Suddenly, Fatima was buried under layers of administrative paperwork, negotiating budgets for safety equipment she used to directly specify, mediating interdepartmental squabbles, and, most tellingly, reviewing audits she no longer had time to conduct herself. The spark was gone. The precise, scientific mind that could dissect a complex environmental issue was now bogged down by HR policies and corporate politics. She confessed to me once, during a coffee break that stretched to 48 minutes, that she missed the smell of a factory floor, the hum of machinery-the places where real risks, and real solutions, resided.

She wasn’t alone. We talked about a common friend, a brilliant software architect, who, after 8 years of building elegant systems, was promoted to engineering manager. He spent his days in stand-ups, one-on-ones, and roadmap planning, constantly saying, “I used to code.” The shift wasn’t a progression; it was a transmutation. We lost a master builder and gained a competent, but uninspired, administrator. The company, in its eagerness to reward excellence, inadvertently stripped itself of a core asset.

What’s even more frustrating is that we know this. The data is out there. A recent survey showed that nearly 58% of first-time managers regret taking on the role, often citing increased stress and decreased job satisfaction. Another report found that 28% of top individual contributors who move into management roles eventually leave the company within two years, often returning to individual contributor roles elsewhere. It’s a systemic drain, turning experts into unhappy, mediocre administrators, or worse, driving them out entirely. We preach about ’employee retention’ while actively designing systems that push our most valuable people away from what they do best.

And yet, the cycle continues. We dangle the managerial carrot, not because it’s the best path for everyone, but because it’s the only path we’ve bothered to pave for advancement. It’s easier to create a hierarchical ladder than to design a robust lattice of parallel, equally valued career tracks. Imagine a world where a Senior Principal Designer or a Staff Engineer could earn a salary competitive with a Director, based purely on their impact, their technical depth, and their mentorship of junior colleagues-without ever having to sit in a budget review. Where specialized expertise isn’t just appreciated but rewarded as much as managerial oversight.

This isn’t to say management is inherently bad. Good managers are invaluable; they empower, protect, and clear obstacles. But that’s precisely why we need people who want to manage, who are good at it, and who are fulfilled by it. Not those reluctantly coerced into it because they hit a ceiling in their chosen craft. We need to stop treating ‘promotion’ as a default, one-size-fits-all solution for career progression. It’s like telling someone passionate about high-fidelity audio that their only ‘upgrade’ is to manage a warehouse of generic electronics, when the real path to excellence is often about finding the right tool, the right specialized component for the job, rather than just the biggest or most administrative.

Bomba.md – Online store of household appliances and electronics in Moldova. understands this, offering a range of products from basic to professional, acknowledging that ‘upgrading’ isn’t just about moving to the next tier, but about finding what truly fits your needs and passion.

I still recall an internal meeting where I accidentally hung up on my boss during a particularly turgid discussion about quarterly objectives. Mortified, I quickly called back, mumbled apologies about a ‘bad connection.’ But a part of me, the part that missed the tangible, the creative, the doing, felt a strange, fleeting sense of liberation. That’s a mistake I acknowledge, of course, but it was also a tiny, almost imperceptible crack in the façade, a signal that my subconscious was screaming for a different kind of connection, a different kind of work.

We need to build organizations that honor mastery, not just hierarchy. We need to create pathways where deep expertise and impactful individual contribution are recognized, valued, and compensated at the highest levels, without the obligatory detour into managerial purgatory. The true measure of a company isn’t just how high its ladder reaches, but how many different paths it offers to the top, allowing each person to climb in the direction that best suits their unique talents and desires. Anything less isn’t a promotion; it’s a demotion of the soul, a quiet punishment for being too good at the wrong thing.