Of course, but that means (at least it should mean IMHO) that an engineer made a career switch into management, and those skills carry over and are valuable. I

Of course, but that means (at least it should mean IMHO) that an engineer made a career switch into management, and those skills carry over and are valuable. I think when a company pushes their engineers to do more and more non-technical tasks, no matter how small, it basically says they don't value engineering and see software problems as a problem of allocating people and resources instead of investing in better engineers and giving them control to innovate. I'm not saying managers are not necessary. It just seems like there is a pyramid structure, and managers are at the top. If you want to be on top of the pyramid you must evolve into a manager and let others do the engineering. I'm willing to grant this is ok in non-software companies, but in software companies it's bizarre and I'm even thinking software engineers should be unionizing and getting some representation.