"Leader" is one of the worst buzzword bingo terms in a company. It means nothing, it's just a convenient label to give people who you feel like promoting to maintain the 10:1 ratio.
You could argue Linus Torvald is an industry leader, or you could argue he doesn't show adequate leadership for cross-team.
Or maybe more succinctly: "If a great manager screws up, he should lay awake at night until he fixes it, just as a great engineer would wake up to fix a production issue."
These traits combined with a scope of influence is what I was referencing.
I do believe in leadership, in the abstract. But at the end of the day companies do whatever the hell people in power choose to (e.g. Fire Steve jobs, promote their friend, hire somebody sexy) and then come up with fancy meaningless words after the fact.
"Force multiplier" and "cross-team leader" are among those. If you really wanted to promote "leaders" then have engineers vote on who gets promoted...
You may want to ask yourself if your viewpoints are a case of WYSIATI bias or a generalizable fact about how businesses are run.
I've had good managers before, I'm not sure why you're saying I haven't, or how that's related to my central claim.
Also "WYSIATI" is a misdirection. You could suggest that to anybody in any argument (I could suggest it to you now). But without providing any evidence of what those unseen factors are it's of no probative value.
I don't think you're trying to understand my point in good faith anymore so I'll leave it here.
This mindset seems corrosive. I assume you had good managers, but I cannot imagine a career in which that was the norm would result in such cynicism.
My point was only this: in my experience, healthy organizations have a better value systems.