Sure, but again, why's my _leader_ the non-technical person? Listen, I've been around the block and I understand it's quite common for the PM or other similar

Sure, but again, why's my _leader_ the non-technical person? Listen, I've been around the block and I understand it's quite common for the PM or other similar softer roles to be given leadership. I've seen this to the point where they both recruit and promote the techs themselves. What I'm saying is it doesn't have to be like this. If the PMs job is to find and articulate value, and the Engineers job is to produce said value, on a well performing team, it's a match made in heaven. A poor PM with dominance over tech will happily torpedo the Engineers career with little emphathy whilst doing so, so why do we assume tech leadership should be in a different department? My opinion is align the Engineer KPIs with value, which aligns them with strong PMs, but allow them the autonomy to say no when it makes sense to. Just an opinion tho :)