[LogHouse]

Good question. For context, I am a high performer in a low performing team with a lower performing manager. The company has rated me as “highest talent” which only one other person on our 50+ department received. To answer your question, I tried what you suggest: influence.

Turns out, people are often intimidated in talent when they have no desire to replicate it - this is especially true for management. Even if I was able to influence others, there’s nobody left to influence me.

Not to mention, it’s makes your workload significantly more when you’re the only one researching things, asking question, improving things, etc.

So, in short, yes you can be talented and elect to quit rather than influence.

[BLKNSLVR]

Management that's open to influence is / should be a magnet to high performers.

But the weed-common presence of conservative management is what makes disruption possible.

Swings and roundabouts.

[no_wizard]

This brings up a good point.

We spend so much time screening engineers, going through code tests, assessments, live code interviews, whiteboard interviews, system design interviews etc.

Yet, we don't have the same vetting standards for managers, at least from what I've seen. There is no "Cracking The Engineering Manager Interview" book, for example. The gauntlet isn't there the same way. There also seems to be far more hesitation to look at management as an issue for negative outcomes vs how its ascribed to engineers[0] much more quickly, yet a manager can make or break an entire team - even turning good engineers into bad ones.

While I suspect that management looks out for management on this, you'd think a broader trend among the community would raise awareness around this, but many well meaning engineers continue to look only at their peers, unless management is particularly ineffective or egregious, rather than evaluating possible management and team practices

[0]: which is the reason given for why engineers have these arduous interviewing requirements, to weed out any possible "under-performers"

[listenallyall]

Pretty rare to get an honest feel for upper management when interviewing or assessing a potential employer. It's only once you're inside, and usually after a few months (sometimes longer) that you get a true feel.