This is why you need to have Senior and Principal engineering roles. As a programmer or operations engineer you should be able to choose between a management o

This is why you need to have Senior and Principal engineering roles. As a programmer or operations engineer you should be able to choose between a management or engineering track for advancement. The managers work as an interface between the management hierarchy and the individual contributors. The top engineers work across teams to steer technical solutions and provide cross team focus and continuity. Your principal engineers are charged with breaking down the silos and sharing and setting technical standards and encouraging the reuse of existing services and systems. Tech managers and team leads don't have time to do the technical leadership and work properly with business. Workplaces without this structure invariably fail to have well articulated, cross team technical decision making capabilities. Everything winds up fragmented and reimplemented.