The really terrible part is the de-correlation of management quality with rewards for management. Supposedly management is better compensated than individuals d

The really terrible part is the de-correlation of management quality with rewards for management. Supposedly management is better compensated than individuals due to their impact upon organizations being greater than individual contributors, but this flies in the face of the modern trend of the "subservient manager" philosophy of management as well as management sometimes just carrying out orders from above that don't require skill (the most common one that we all recognize requiring little insight or talent is "reduce costs"). Managers are sometimes given truly terrible situations that nobody can manage their way out (no budget, bad morale, bad organizational reputation of the group, and no authority to create change to reverse the situation) If you have a poor individual contributor, they are almost always fired. If you have a poor manager, oftentimes they have worked a relationship with someone that has power that makes it very difficult to fire them, so they're oftentimes "promoted." This kind of nepotism and cronyism exists to some extent among individual contributors but ICs usually disperse more across business verticals throughout their careers while managers and others in primarily soft skill roles tend to be extremely connected (whether through intrinsic personality or due to the nature of their jobs is another question) and seem to act more as cohorts rather than as individuals.