Not just the freshly promoted engineers themselves. I've had the discussion "don't promote, increase compensation" too often. With HR, with hiring managers, with C-level.

I was promoted into management myself too early. And I made many, many mistakes. Would have been better to have been a Sr. Engineer for a couple of years, though back then, it didn't really work like that, yet. Now, it is much easier to tune things, and I think that having engineers that make the same kind of money as C-level is more acceptable nowadays too. There are people that are really worth a lot that under no circumstance should ever be promoted away from the work they love.

he's not saying they should actually drop a level, he's saying they should rethink what their role is

right?