The place I work now has a good mix of hyper-competent 1st level managers. Its almost weird, but for sure its a result of the expectation that "team leads" or w

The place I work now has a good mix of hyper-competent 1st level managers. Its almost weird, but for sure its a result of the expectation that "team leads" or whatever you want to call them are also managers. I'm not sure I agree with having the technical guy be the personal manager, but when they only have a couple direct reports a good percentage seem be able to herd the cats semi competently. That isn't to say there aren't plenty of disasters, but when it works, it works fairly well. I guess you just have to be willing to throw away some of your best technical people when it turns out they don't make good managers, or they turn into just another layer of middle mgmt that needs to be cut in a few years.