I agree with this 100%, and I think the people providing this leadership should be in management. Software engineers need to be managed by someone who can unde

I agree with this 100%, and I think the people providing this leadership should be in management. Software engineers need to be managed by someone who can understand and evaluate their work, because of what you said and also because other aspects of management benefit from the ability to cast a critical eye over the work being done as well. EDIT: Going further, I think the people trying to hire me as an engineer to fix their problems should have replaced their front-line management with managers who understood code, so they had some clue what their engineers were doing wrong and how to fix it. The idea that engineers should be able self-manage is a rare best case scenario, not a best practice that can be replicated across the industry.