First, it's ego. Engineers are a deeply opinionated species that will not heed the advice of a man they deem to be inferior to them in technical ability. Techn

First, it's ego. Engineers are a deeply opinionated species that will not heed the advice of a man they deem to be inferior to them in technical ability. Technical competency based promotion is about managing hubris and egos. For the second, I have a hot-take: "All problems in tech are work estimation problems." And so too is who gets to be manager. Nothing annoys an engineer more than a manager who estimates arbitrary times to tasks. Similarly, nothing annoys a manager than being unable to establish accountability for work effectiveness of an employee. So non-technical managers set up metrics (LOC, Hours worked, tickets moved) for accountability. Average Metrics are bad and bad metrics are disastrous. Metrics are exploited by the politically savvy, set up micromanagement structures and discourage those who are actually well aligned with product success. A good engineer makes work-estimation easier, avoiding the need for some of these toxic structures.