>If you are a great person, why do you want to work for somebody you cannot learn anything from? What's the alternative? The truly great contributors don't wa

>If you are a great person, why do you want to work for somebody you cannot learn anything from? What's the alternative? The truly great contributors don't want to be managers; they want to do real work. You can't be a manager and also do real work; there's not enough time. I've seen good managers actively quit their role because they wanted to do interesting work, not manage. >And you know what’s interesting - you know what the best managers are? They are the great individual contributors who never ever wanted to be a manager, but decide they have to be a manager because no one else is able to do as good job as them.” And then they can't do any interesting work, because their days are full of meetings. They eventually get tired of this and switch roles (or companies if they have to) and return to IC roles. Someone has to be the manager; you can't have a company with thousands of engineers and a handful of executives managing them. Asking great ICs to do as you suggest isn't scalable or sustainable.