Engineering Manager (or Director/VP) is about building a "machine that builds product". Engineer (or Architect/CTO) is about "building the product". Switching between the two as described in the article is perfectly OK and a good career path - but if you really want to be good at one you'll have to give up the other. Management (or building the machine that builds the product) is a skill that requires a lot of experimentation, studying, mistakes - just like any new programming language or stack. If you want to become good at it, you'll need to focus on it full-time for several years.