> An engineer who is good at leading through influence.
That's rare. In most companies managers aren't engineers, don't understand the craft and are picked by their buddies. They also have completely different incentives which allows them to throw engineers who spent ages to master the craft under the bus without any regards/regrets.
My hot take on this is craft is not the most important thing in engineering. Especially if you are making anything remotely significant in size. As soon as more than one person is involved in the work, ability to actually collaborate becomes more important than how brilliant each individual contributor is. The myth of genius asshole is my biggest pet peeve, if you are an asshole on purpose (like because you dont care how the other person feels) your genius is not useful and doesn't belong in any decently sized organization.
The point of my comment was that in most companies the managers are the jerks, not engineers. As a VP I had to shield individual developers from some insane managers that got kicks from the tiny power they had.
That's rare. In most companies managers aren't engineers, don't understand the craft and are picked by their buddies. They also have completely different incentives which allows them to throw engineers who spent ages to master the craft under the bus without any regards/regrets.
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