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The trick in my observation seems to be that, on the manager track, it's possible to get move up by being on a successful project and simply not getting in the

The trick in my observation seems to be that, on the manager track, it's possible to get move up by being on a successful project and simply not getting in the way, which plausibly may be what was needed ("the team had gelled and was cranking away and I felt the best way to support them was to free them to do what they needed to do"). This can be repeated pretty far up. As an aside, I'd estimate that the less a manager ends up needing to do, the more likely success ends up being on a project. Meanwhile, hanging back, chilling, reacting, and taking credit for the work of others tends to not get it done on the technical track and even doing great work doesn't mean much without you or someone else doing a bunch of selling for it.

sokoloff 8y ago
There is a lot of generally invisible work of leaders. That can be hard to distinguish from "not doing anything at all" in the moment, but across a year or more, the leaders who carefully build teams, work with the engineering leads to set appropriate goals and scope for projects, make sure that critical roadblocks are removed, ensure that engineers feel engaged with the work and company goals will succeed beyond that of those are literally doing nothing. To the junior engineers in the org, it may not appear any different and one leader just seems to keep getting lucky (appearing to just be dealt a series of good teams, good projects, consistently getting good outcomes, etc).