While I agree with you in principle that engineering management is actually pretty far down the ladder in terms of real value to a business (the top and bottom

While I agree with you in principle that engineering management is actually pretty far down the ladder in terms of real value to a business (the top and bottom layers of the org structure are usually far more important in what the company will end up doing than the middle), there does need to exist such an abstraction (in sufficiently large companies) for a plethora of reasons, many of them quite obvious. However, that's not why I chose to reply to your comment. > HR nonsense like personnel management, hiring and firing. Hiring and firing is right up there in terms of factors that decide the fate of a company. It absolutely cannot be considered 'nonsense', at least if you want the company to be around for a while.