Can You ‘Unboss’ Yourself Without Ruining Your Career?

Sick of managing people? Maybe you should stop.

So many of us stumble into being the boss, or raise our hands because it feels like the only way to get ahead . We’re attracted to the cachet of the title, the promise of more money or the comfort of having a ladder to ascend.

Then come the performance reviews to write, the team drama to adjudicate, the meetings to attend . The job keeps getting harder. Managers oversee nearly three times as many people today as they did in 2017, according to data from research and advisory firm Gartner . Nearly one in five managers says that, given a choice, they’d prefer not to oversee people.

“That’s what we call buyer’s remorse,” says Swagatam Basu , a senior director in Gartner’s human-resources practice.

You can switch back. And your company might be amenable. More are “unbossing” their workplaces by shrinking middle-management layers .

The trick is figuring out a way to maintain your pay and influence. In some companies, the number of people you manage is a proxy for your power. Others now use special individual-contributor tracks, meant to ensure that technical experts have a set path to climb.

You might have to give something up. Making the shift could still feel like a relief.

“It was like, oh, I don’t have to deal with the people issues,” says Suzet McKinney , an executive at Sterling Bay, a Chicago real-estate company. She’d served in leadership positions before. When she started her current role in 2021—no pay cut required—she figured she’d eventually hire direct reports and build out a team. Then she realized she didn’t miss it.

“Managing people would be more of a distraction,” she says.

Making the ask

Dennis Henry , an engineering director overseeing about 45 staffers, was hungry to move to the next managerial rung at software company Okta last year. Then his supervisor explained that would mean even less time to do the technical work he loved. It made the 38-year-old wonder: Did he want to be a boss at all?

“What would hurt more?” Henry asked himself. Giving up managing or giving up coding? The latter felt unfathomable.

He pondered what he’d want if he left management entirely and became an individual contributor, ranking priorities. Maintaining his base salary—just shy of $300,000—was tops. He told his boss that he was happy to stay in his current role if a new opportunity didn’t pan out.

“You have to be ready to hear ‘no,’ ” the Orlando, Fla., resident says.

He got a yes: The company created a new job for him and preserved his pay. After 15 years as a manager, carving out a new kind of authority has been a transition.

As a boss, “I could just say, ‘Do this,’ ” he says. Now he spends more time amassing evidence for his ideas, making his case.

“It is so much harder to convince people that something is the best option,” he says.

The stress of managing

Jenny Blake ’s mental health took a dive after she was promoted to team lead at Google at age 24. She felt stressed and emotionally drained, deeply responsible for her team but beholden to decisions from above, like a department reorganisation ordered up by executives.

A 2024 survey from SHRM, a lobby for human-resources professionals, found that 40% of respondents said their mental health declined when they took on a managerial or leadership role.

Blake switched to an individual contributor job, spending several years rolling out new programs she felt had a much bigger impact than her management. Now an author and speaker focused on careers and business, she recommends broaching the transition conversation by laying out your unique strengths and how they can better serve the company in a new role. Don’t dwell on your distaste for managing people.

Want to ensure the shift isn’t a demotion? Make sure you’re staying close to parts of the business that are directly tied to revenue, she says. Build your reputation externally, speaking at conferences and publishing papers.

“Become an industry expert,” she says.

The reality of switching

Just because a company touts opportunities for individual contributors to grow doesn’t mean you’ll be able to rise to the top unimpeded. A former consultant at a professional-services firm told me that partners who didn’t have their own teams were treated like second-class citizens.

At Launch Potato, a digital-media company based in Delray Beach, Fla., the individual-contributor track tops out several levels below the executive level. Even on the lower rungs, managers have the opportunity to make higher salaries and bonuses than commensurate individual contributors, says Kristopher Osborne , the company’s senior vice president of talent.

“You are getting paid a premium to deal with a lot more issues and challenges,” he says of managers. “People have to be realistic.”

He recommends ambitious individual contributors show they’re bringing leadership to the company in different ways. Can you run strategy initiatives, coach teammates or get swaths of the organization on board with new initiatives?

Letting go

In a previous job, Sheri Byrne-Haber liked managing people and being a “one-stop shop” for her 20-person digital-accessibility department, even as the workload ballooned. So when her boss suggested splitting her role in two, she initially said no.

She reconsidered when performance-review season arrived. She had to write 19.

The company hired a new counterpart for her, charged with managing, and Byrne-Haber focused on strategy. Letting go was harder than she expected. It took her three months to unsubscribe from all the manager-only Slack channels, email lists and meetings she had been looped in on. When colleagues reached out with questions, she’d pause to determine whether the queries were still related to her responsibilities. If not, she forced herself to forward them to the new manager, even when she knew the answer.

“It felt awkward,” says Byrne-Haber, now at work on her own startup. “But that’s not my job anymore.”

Happy is the family whose members—parents, grandparents and grown children—trust each other enough to cooperate on shared goals, especially financial ones. When that is truly the case, Uncle Sam’s tax rules can help as well.

This matters especially now that mortgage rates are above 7%, and many families are looking for ways to help younger members. If the elders have resources and are confident younger ones can cooperate, a family loan could make homeownership possible while providing the elders with a useful income stream.

Other strategies can actually lower taxes, such as when funding 529 plans or Roth IRAs, or when someone inherits a traditional IRA with required withdrawals larger than they will need.

Here are three strategies useful for functional families.

Intrafamily loans

It is perfectly legal for families to lend money to a relative for a down payment or even a private mortgage.

But it is important not to cut corners, says Ryan McKeown, a CPA with Modern Wealth Enhancement in Minnesota. If the loan is for a down payment, be honest with the mortgage provider and have a formal agreement. The lender owes tax on the interest payments received.

If the loan is for a private mortgage, both sides should have legal representation with a formal written agreement, including payment terms. The lender owes tax on the interest, and the borrower often can deduct it if he or she itemizes.

To avoid IRS trouble, the interest rate shouldn’t be lower than the agency’s Applicable Federal Rate at the time of the loan. Currently that is about 5% for loans longer than nine years; about 4.5% for loans three to nine years; and about 4% for loans three years or less. Currently, traditional mortgage rates are generally above 7%.

In addition, the lender could use the $19,000 annual gift-tax exemption (described below) to forgive some or all of the interest or principal annually. If both lenders and borrowers are married, that is up to $76,000 a year. There is no tax for the borrower on such forgiveness, because it is from a gift.

If you’re going this route, McKeown advises against having a fixed plan to forgive the debt. Instead, do it in one-off letters specifying the amount—and keep careful records. Otherwise the IRS might try to treat the loan as a taxable gift.

Asset gifts

Powerful tax-saving moves for families often use gift-tax provisions. Under current law, anyone can give anyone else up to $19,000 of assets annually, free of gift tax. That means a married couple with three grandchildren could give them a total of $114,000 in 2026.

The gifts can be cash or other assets, like stock. For noncash gifts, the cost basis—which is the starting point for measuring taxable gain after a sale—“carries over” to the recipient. So if someone buys $1,000 of stock and gives it away when it is worth $5,000, the recipient’s cost basis is $1,000. If the recipient later sells the shares for $8,000, the taxable gain is $7,000.

Here’s an example showing how gifts could save a family taxes. Grandma is a widow of modest means, while her child and spouse have prospered. The couple has two children, and they want to contribute $5,000 to a 529 college-savings plan for each—but they need to sell stock to do it. Their tax rate on the sale would be 18.8%, and they would need to sell about $11,000 of stock.

However, Grandma’s federal tax rate on the stock sale is 0%. If the couple gives $10,000 of shares to Grandma, she could sell them, pay no tax, and fund the grandchildren’s 529 plans. This saves about $1,000 of tax.

These moves are legal, and they could be used in other ways, such as to help a young person fund a Roth IRA.

But trust among family members is essential: Under the law, givers can’t put conditions on a gift. Grandma could use her stock proceeds to take a cruise, but she makes 529 contributions instead.

Mark Sellner, a retired tax attorney and CPA living in Sarasota, Fla., uses this strategy. His children sell stock he gives them and fund 529 plans for his grandchildren.

The family’s tax savings aren’t huge, but he likes other benefits. The sales by his children don’t boost his adjusted gross income, which in turn could raise his Medicare Irmaa premiums or his 3.8% surtax on net investment income.

Sellner doesn’t worry about his children using the funds for another purpose.

“There can’t be any strings attached to gifts. Of course, it is up to us to decide whether to make them in the future,” he says.

Two caveats: The “kiddie tax” applies to most children under age 24, and it is levied at the parents’ rate on investment income above $2,700 in 2026. Consider this before making gifts to a young person.

Investors who give away stock also forgo the step-up, an important provision that exempts assets held at death from capital-gains tax.

Sellner knows he’s losing a step-up, but says, “The children could use a little more now. Why should they wait 20 years to get it?”

Disclaimers

A disclaimer is a highly useful strategy in which one heir renounces an inheritance in favor of another heir. Assuming family members cooperate, this can save taxes.

Here’s one example. Dad died and had a large traditional IRA that he left to Mom. She has enough assets and income to cover her expenses, and she lives in a state with a stiff estate tax. The inherited IRA would put her estate over the threshold.

Also surviving are three young-adult children. If Mom disclaims all or part of Dad’s IRA within nine months of his death, that amount could go directly to the children. They will have 10 years to empty the account, and the family as a whole will likely save estate and income taxes.

Disclaimers have many key details, especially regarding beneficiary documents. Although heirs have great freedom in choosing what assets to disclaim, the rules about who gets disclaimed property are rigid. It is best if the original owner names tiers of heirs so that if one disclaims, the next recipient is clear.