Though I do think there's a lot of bad managers around, one thing to consider is that executive type roles tend to be people jobs, and people jobs are hard to d

Though I do think there's a lot of bad managers around, one thing to consider is that executive type roles tend to be people jobs, and people jobs are hard to do without face to face conversations. Office politics requires you to weigh what people want to do, and that's often hard without seeing exactly what expression someone is making. It also thrives on knowing who is talking to who, and that's also a lot easier to figure out in real life than via slack.