The story of Bay Area engineering and management is so fraught that it's hard to know where to begin. First, tech and team leads are regularly pushed out of au

The story of Bay Area engineering and management is so fraught that it's hard to know where to begin. First, tech and team leads are regularly pushed out of authority by management types, like the ones you described or worse ones who get promoted by slimming a team down. Then there's the whole fabrication of accomplishments where managers will get promoted for the work of ICs while tech leads and ICs don't. I'm not saying get rid of management, but the Bay really needs to reassess it's incentive and management structure. If anything, let the managers be a tool to the team rather than an authority figure. Then pair them with a competent tech lead to handle things the lead or ICs can't do on their own.