> In corporate jobs, this is rarely the way in. Most likely, you'll have to convince your current manager (and maybe theirs) that you're ready to be a manager and look for a manager opening elsewhere in the company.

Also, get ready for a lot of gatekeeping. “Oh, you don’t really want to be a manager! It’s so much more responsibility and work. You should be happy to be a foot soldier for the rest of your career! Management is not all it’s cracked up to be. As you can see I’m stressed all the time! Now excuse me, I have to go close on my second vacation home in Hawaii.”

The requirement's usually tied to holding the title, like they want that to have been your full-time thing. It's been my experience that people see what you're doing in a very different light depending on your title (one title, one company one day, everyone second-guesses or ignores everything you say; different title, different company, a few days later, suddenly everyone's deferring to you in meetings and sincerely asking your opinion about everything to such a degree that it's unnerving) including in hindsight—if your title was "lead" you don't have to spend a ton of time explaining exactly how, as a non-"lead", you were leading to convince people you were, and you don't have to avoid giving the impression you were being "bossy" or overstepping by doing it.

[EDIT] my suspicion here is that yeah, it's basically "luck into it". I mean that's how everything else I've done career- and pay-progression-wise has worked (luck into someone tasking me with something they definitely wouldn't hire me to do, but after I've done it for a few months someone else would) so maybe this'll work out the same way.

> If you think you're ready and your current employer does not, you'll have to look outside.

Is it even possible to find a management position outside without management experience?

I’ve faced the typical deadlock that first time job seekers encounter: you need management experience to get hired as a manager, but nobody will give you a chance to get management experience because you’ve never managed before.