I was really trying not to respond to you here but I can't let this statement stand uncontested: I think one of Google's weaknesses is that there's an

I was really trying not to respond to you here but I can't let this statement stand uncontested: I think one of Google's weaknesses is that there's an unspoken mentality that engineering is for smart people and everything else is for people who couldn't cut it. That might be why Google has excellent engineers but incompetent PMs and middle managers. This is false. Nowhere in the company have I seen this "mentality" you speak of. Either you imagined it or you're making it up. The PMs and Managers I've worked with and encountered have been, without exception, very smart and very well informed and very concerned with helping me do my job as an engineer. Some of them were former engineers who were both very knowledgeable and very good at their jobs who decided they would like a change.