[lnsru]

Most managers I worked for in corporate setting didn’t really care for people. They were loyal to their superiors. And their subordinates were more or less tools for a goal. Most absurd situation was in my previous job where the company hired experienced manager as a developer and suppressed him on every occasion. My precursor and I left that place very quickly. So the people skills from my single data point are not the prerequisite for becoming manager. But again. I am single data point. Maybe there are places where managers care about something else than budgets, timelines and their own bonuses.

[namdnay]

That's kind of beside the point - for the sake of argument, let's say managers only care about "budgets, timelines". It would still be a stretch to switch from an IC role to suddenly managing the "budgets, timelines" not only of a team but of a whole department

[lnsru]

I am convinced, that the guys, who got promoted, know how to manage things. Even in toxic place I worked as an important IC I assisted doing project plans and technology roadmaps. The department things were same charts, but without technical slang and absolutely anonymized threading workers as an abstract number “headcount”.