[Magmalgebra]

> Managing down isn't actually that hard to get the hang of if you have strong technical skills and reasonable communications skills. But managing down is very similar to being a good teaching professor: absolutely worthless and largely done at your own peril.

To your earlier point - even this is contextual. Incredibly high performing teams tend to be really hard to retain. It's not that hard to make your bosses love you if you're posting wildly out of band results - so the struggle is making sure the people who are actually making that happen stay on and stay engaged.

(I'll note that some of the most successful managers I know built their career on creating playgrounds for a small number of high performing ICs)