[josht]

Thank you for sharing your perspective—it’s an important one. Leadership isn’t for everyone, and that’s completely fine. Those driven to master technical skills should absolutely continue down that path—it leads to incredible innovation and contributions.

That said, I believe technical leadership works best when carried out by those with hands-on experience. This background fosters a deep understanding and empathy for engineers, making such leaders uniquely equipped to guide teams effectively.

For those interested in developing soft skills alongside their technical expertise, leadership offers a chance to scale their impact in new ways. By combining hard and soft skills, leaders can achieve non-linear scalability, influencing not just the work but the people and systems around them.

Ultimately, it’s about choice. Both paths—technical mastery and leadership—are valuable. The key is ensuring leadership is a deliberate pursuit, not just the default next step.