[acatnamedjoe]

Do you have any evidence to support the statement that this is "the rule in the UK"? Anecdotally (in the UK) I've only ever known managers of technical teams to have risen from technical roles, and have never heard of anyone going straight into technical management from university. I'm not super experienced though so very open to my experience not being the norm, just curious if you were speaking from experience or research.

[skippyboxedhero]

Yes, you are right. Within IT, that is definitely true...and creates it's own problems because devs (in the UK) often lack business skills..and the alternative is a non-dev who lacks tech skills.

But the example I gave is more prevalent within engineering generally. Engineering grads will hope to either work in banking or go directly into management scheme (GE was the premium one...when GE was big, defence is the other big one). The pay for actual engineering work (outside O&G) is very low, and only attractive because PHd work is even more exploitative.