Sorry I lost you. I understood you believe titles rarely align with skill and companies disingenuously use "leader" to justify a ratio of employees to managers.

Sorry I lost you. I understood you believe titles rarely align with skill and companies disingenuously use "leader" to justify a ratio of employees to managers. A company is as likely to promote on the basis of "hire somebody sexy" as anything else. This mindset seems corrosive. I assume you had good managers, but I cannot imagine a career in which that was the norm would result in such cynicism. My point was only this: in my experience, healthy organizations have a better value systems.