The entire construct of the manager being the default “leader” is a big part of this issue. It means that anyone with natural leadership ability is always pushed into an increasingly non-technical role, or will be eventually forced to choose between technical or management paths.

Managers should be treated as just another member of the team, who facilitates, organizes and keeps records. Sometimes this person is a natural leader, and sometimes they are not, and a lot the conflict between engineering and management stems from managers imposing meaningless, arbitrary, org chart authority over a better suited technical leader within the engineering team itself. Or when that natural leader gets promoted to management and loses the broader view of what’s happening in the technical trenches.

Times have changed. People aren’t quitting, they are allowing you to fire them.

My manager does 8/9 of these. Time to go