[kaspm]

I think this is a good general point. Looking at management as "just hire a good people manager" is too myopic. It takes many things to just be a good "people" manager - empathy, high bar setting, ability to negotiate compromises. And that doesn't include the _other_ skillsets a good engineering manager has: understanding the time tradeoffs of the team, delivery management, ability to resolve technical stalemates, ability to communicate effectively up, down and across to ensure people are coordinated, work is non-duplicative and efficient. Being an engineering manager is not a "black hole" for old people who don't program, it's a completely different technical skillset. A good one produces quite a bit more value to the company than _most_ single engineers can. Not because they are bad, but because writing good software requires lots of good engineers working together.

[3rdAccount]

In my case I'm referring to a regular/traditional engineer and not software engineer for my particular industry, but the concepts a as far as management go are the same. One thing that makes me glad I'm not in a software shop is that I see virtually zero age discrimination. It takes years and years to build up industry experience, so generally speaking, the older the better. Where young folks usually do better is with computers/programming/automation as it wasn't common place outside of college for older engineers. This doesn't mean that some older engineers can't write some Fortran though.