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A lot of people get engineering degrees as a signalling mechanism to prove they can do hard work, not because they have any interest in becoming engineers. Formal training in a subject combined with a lack of intrinsic curiosity about the subject makes the worst engineering managers you will ever meet.

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I think this is probably true.

Empirically speaking, a lot of the guys who graduated with their B.Sc. in computer science with me saw their career paths as joining a big consulting company, working on the front lines for a couple of years and then getting into management and leaving the code behind for good.

In my PhD program, most guys in the lab saw the actual engineering side of things as a stepping stone to higher-paid positions in acadaemia.

Clearly a significant number of people with engineering degrees are engineers only by title.

The claim was that "engineers are never the one in charge." If your argument is that engineers cease to be engineers once they get into management, then it's tautological that "engineers are never in charge."

The point as I read it was that people who aspire to management aren't really engineers in the truest sense, but engineers "only by title".

That is, people working on actual engineering aren't really "engineers" if they have their eyes set on something else, like a higher position in acadaemia.

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