I don’t see why there is a technical vs management path at many companies, you want management to be a support for the product that’s being delivered and your teams should be skilled in and embody the product they’re making first. Management for management sake makes the product a 2nd goal otherwise. You could argue we can’t find people who can do that, fair enough, but there are plenty of companies that do and their performance is high because of it.
There is more than technical situations in focus here. Someone needs to understand the financials and decide if the company can afford to develop a new product, and if so how much to spend. Someone needs to deal with the employee who is harassing a coworker. Someone needs to sell the product. Someone needs to figure out what feature is most important in the new product. Someone needs to figure out if you buy supplies at today's low prices or wait. Someone needs to decide how much quality to sacrifice for lower prices. Someone needs to decide if reusing some subsystem will pay off in the long run.
Some of the above decisions have a technical part, but none are entirely technical questions.
