How to stop your career stagnating like Reggie Perrin's

> "You'd have a really good engineer who wanted more money and more status and recognition, and it took him away from being a really good engineer and often into being a really bad project manager."

Exactly. So many engineers follow a default career progression into management, and then end up losing their edge from replacing an IDE with excel spreadsheets and powerpoint, and going from meeting to meeting all day.

This also results in folk being managers, who do not have the skill and character needed to manage people.

- Management is a skill, not a career path. - Gabe Newell