I'm surprised nobody yet mentioned this is a trivial case of a developer who matured enough to be more valuable as a manager. Once you see beyond the odd difference (it's a startup, and he's supervising a guy in Ukraine), it's all the same you see in most developers' careers as they progress.

Some developers won't heed the call and prefer to stay "close to the metal" cause they enjoy it more, and some are genuinely bad at managing. However, very often an experienced developer will benefit a project much more when he can afford to look at the grand scheme of things.