Summary: Managers who know how to manage, but don't know how to do anything are not the best managers. The best managers are the great individual contributors who never ever wanna be a manager but decide they have to be a manager because no one else is going to be able to do as good a job as them.
There's a third option that's missing from that dichotomy: people who are OK individual contributors but who are actually really good at managing people.
These are the best managers, because they have the disposition/skills to be a good manager, but also aren't going to make dumb engineering decisions.
IC's who become reluctant managers are generally terrible managers because it's not what they're good at and not what they enjoy.
let me add a fourth then: ICs who had really great managers and became great as a result, and when given the opportunity decided to then become the next great manager and mentor the next group of great ICs.
This comes from the perspective of someone who manages managers. So if you're looking to hire managers, and don't care about retention, perhaps this is good advice to follow.
But if you're looking to evaluate your manager, or hire managers who can retain great people, maybe not the best advice.
Managers who didn’t want to be managers are the worse ones. They don’t know how to play politics and compete for resources against other managers and make sure their team gets raises and promotions.
The skillset you need for management are different from those you need as an IC
Yes and Steve Jobs led illegal collusion between most of the big tech companies to keep compensation down. He wasn’t exactly the most employee focused CEO.
Summary: Managers who know how to manage, but don't know how to do anything are not the best managers. The best managers are the great individual contributors who never ever wanna be a manager but decide they have to be a manager because no one else is going to be able to do as good a job as them.