In what organisation do 25 year olds manage 50 year olds?
It doesn't take a genius to know who is doing the work and who is looking for every excuse to be 'blocked'.
Managers simply know that they can't hire or fire and that calling someone on their bullshit would accomplish nothing, so they say nothing.
Managers are masters of soft power. Soft power is very hard for engineering/techie types to understand, which is why it works so well on them, because they don't even understand the game they're a part of :)
They should not be making technology decisions or specifying how the work gets done. They should trust their reports to not bullshit (and if that trust is broken, those reports should be fired). I think having a technical background can be helpful for these managers, but I don't think it's strictly necessary, and they should be doing essentially zero technical work as a part of their management job.
I've found managers who are like this to be incredibly useful and productive, and a pleasure to work with. Managers who want to get involved in technical decisions just get in the way and cause problems. Unfortunately a lot of newly-promoted former engineers can't let go of the technical work.
I think it prevented the "us vs. them" mentality from creeping in, and I got the impression that most managers were eager to return to production work. There were dedicated managers higher up the ladder, of course.
These people cared about their work a lot, and they enjoyed doing it. Not sure which way the causation goes though...
Edit to add: the rotating managers I'm referring to were doing budgets and performance reviews, not creating business strategies.
The company's last valuation has it worth over a billion dollars now and they have a few hundred employees. A good chunk of the C suite and VPs are still those same early employees who are now in their late 20s and early 30s. Some are managing former FAANG employees in their 50s.
Now, they were PAID a lot more than me ...
The first thing they taught me was that it wasn't my job to do the work, because it didn't matter how smart I was, I didn't have almost 30 years experience.
I hope to no longer need to work by the time I'm 50, but nobody knows what the future will bring, so I'd certainly like to have the option just in case!
I've spent a lot of time in startups - including way too many hours in my 20's working on side-hustles (wife was in med school, so it was kind of my thing to do). I've ended up in a situation where my technical skills are strong (but not the best on my team), but my business/startup knowledge is much better so I can help to ensure everyone is working towards the most impactful/valuable outcomes.
We're both at different companies nowadays, but I've been trying to get him started at my current company's team (which I am senior on, but not a lead) for a while now and he's considering it!
I'm contracting with a couple different companies, and one of them... the others on the team range from ... 27-32. So... I've been doing professional/paid development work longer than most of them have been alive, certainly longer than any of them have been adults. The manager(s) I interact with - one just turned 31, and one is... I think 29 or 30.
The older you get the more common this may become.
