Before Jeff Dean was a "manager", he got a > Ph.D. in computer science from the department that would become the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington in 1996, working under Craig Chambers on compilers[8] and whole-program optimization techniques for object-oriented programming languages.[9]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Dean?#Early_life_and_educ...

So he's got no shortage of talent as an IC.

Jeff Dean invented MapReduce and Bigtable.

Say what you want about their later years, but Dean and Ghemawat deserve their title of engineer.