The best individual contributors often make mediocre managers. The skills don't transfer. Being excellent at writing code doesn't mean you can teach someone else to write code. Closing deals yourself is different from building a system that helps five people close deals.
Most managers promote their top performer because it feels like the right way to reward them. Then they lose their best IC and gain their worst manager. The person struggles, the team suffers, and you're stuck—demoting them feels cruel, but leaving them in place is expensive.
Ask one question before promoting anyone: Do they make the people around them better? Not "are they helpful when asked." Not "do people like them." Do junior people get observably better at their jobs after working with this person? If yes, they might be ready. If no, you're about to create two problems.
The economic logic is brutal. A bad promotion costs you twice because you lose production from their old role (typically your highest output IC) and create drag in their new one. If they were producing at 150% of standard as an IC and they're now at 70% as a manager while their team underperforms, you've turned one excellent employee into a net-negative.
A successful promotion creates leverage. One person who was producing 1.5x standard output can multiply the output of 5-8 others. That's the whole point of management. But only if they can actually manage.
Here's the test: Give them a trial project leading 2-3 people for 60-90 days before the promotion. Something real, not made-up. If they elevate the team's output without doing all the work themselves, promote them. If they become a bottleneck or revert to IC mode and do the work themselves, keep them as a senior IC and pay them like one.
The best companies create senior IC tracks specifically for this reason. You can reward excellence without forcing people into management roles they're not built for. Staff engineer, principal designer, senior account executive—these roles exist because someone realized that "up or out" is expensive stupidity.
Your top performer doesn't need to manage people to grow. They need to be paid well, given harder problems, and not pushed into a role that will make them miserable and cost you twice.
