Oh I completely empathize with you, but I also believe that part of the high pay in tech has partly to do with the 'management overhead premium'. Like I'd love

Oh I completely empathize with you, but I also believe that part of the high pay in tech has partly to do with the 'management overhead premium'. Like I'd love to work for Google or Amazon on cutting edge shit - but I'd rather make half the pay to avoid the clown-brained managers, useless politics, and soul-crushing waste. My solution btw is a simple one: managers should be forced to find executive coaches outside their org. Leadership and management can be learned from a good coach – and BAD leadership/management is, IMO, responsible for most problems inside an org. Not shifting market conditions, not complex tech, not incompetent engineers – but bad leaders. Measure it with peer rating systems. Simple questions like "Would you follow this leader if they moved to a different company?" should make that manager's skills or progress pretty clear, pretty quick.