[amznthrowaway5]

Great comment, I find that many influencer types aren't actually capable of doing the jobs of their juniors and reasoning about low level systems. Promotion systems don't differentiate between having influence and having good influence. Also, sometimes the hard problems that have the most impact and real org wide influence aren't at the visible influencer level, but instead related to low level "grunt work" problems. A lot of the principal engineer and sr engineering manager types aren't actually worth their salt and can't solve hard problems, instead relying on others to do the work and then participating in high level meetings so they can take the credit.