Some of this seems a little simplistic; as a relatively new director who reports to the CTO I think everyone is "building the plan" but at different levels of g

Some of this seems a little simplistic; as a relatively new director who reports to the CTO I think everyone is "building the plan" but at different levels of granularity. Where we run into trouble is when the CTO gets too far away from defining the broad outcomes and veers deep into the "how". They get very prescriptive, but without the context of the implementation details or any real knowledge of the countless small problems that directors, then managers, then ICs deal with. It looks a lot like (and really is a falvour of) micro-managing. >> It conflates career development and salary negotiation I just went through this with an IC 2 levels below me. To the credit of the person's manager they communicated to the IC "don't ask me for a promotion when you want more money". The (easily said; harder to implement) solution is to build a management relationship with people that has an "agent-client" dynamic. The direct manager can't be viewed as the decision maker and needs to be the advocate for this to happen IME.