[presentation]

ICs are looking at problems through a magnifying glass, colored by the nature of their specialization. Managers are supposed to be looking at the state of their team/company i more broadly, making sure that ICs are motivated to do good work, and direct their effort towards the most high-impact things, which is hard to do if you don’t have full context or an overly specialized mindset.

Once a business gets large enough then it’s impossible for any one person to fully understand everything across the entire business and to have the mindset to make the best decisions. Focusing on the wrong things can waste up to 100% of the effort the IC expends, even if that IC thinks they’re being efficient. Make effective decisions is valuable.

Good corporate management can make a company many orders of magnitude more effective. Bad corporate management can do the opposite.