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It's a tradeoff. Some of my worst managers were former programmers; some of my best came in through some side door. Management ability--real management, as in getting people to get along and get the job done, not as in making Gantt charts and chanting buzzwords--is essential, and it's really rare to find it combined with technical skills.

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It's not rare in the Silicon Valley. Most managers in successful companies here are what you'd consider rare. Managers without real management ability don't last long here.

And are they also good engineers? That's the hard part; the kind of obsessive focus usually required to be a good geek tends to impair the social skills required to be a good manager. Not always, I admit, but usually.

I did work in Silicon Valley, but not for very long; and it was in the late 90s, at Netscape, so my experience was probably atypical.

All great engineering managers I know were also great engineers. It's possible to use your geek focus to improve your social skills, I've done it :)

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