[rightbyte]

This is not my experience. It might depend on the field. Unless there is a "peak IC" doing stuff development stagnate and no matter how much time or resources is put into something the great results never comes. Things turn out good, yes, but not great.

It might be that I see this from an engineering perspective and that "the market" and stockholders wont notice in the short term until the brand gets a quality reputation in 10-20 years from user hearsay.

Managers on the other hand seems to mostly have the duty of fighting fires and putting out fires - with the most important quality of not litting fires themselves. There is no way a great engineer working as a manager have time to deal with deep proactive technical issues where I have worked.