the best manager I ever had was a VP who came from a banking background—the key thing was not that he had written a lot of production software himself, but that he had seen what great software looks like (apparently he worked closely with the core Slang/SecDB guys), and was willing to trust engineers who could build similar styles of tools
on the other hand, the recent skip-level I had that got me to quit in six months was an engineer himself, but had no real opinion on code quality or anything more than a superficial, process-oriented understanding of the dynamics on the team :(
moral of the story: taste is necessary; direct technical experience is mostly necessary, but nowhere near sufficient
marcosdumay
What you are describing is direct technical experience. That the banker did have, but the one titled as engineer didn't.
on the other hand, the recent skip-level I had that got me to quit in six months was an engineer himself, but had no real opinion on code quality or anything more than a superficial, process-oriented understanding of the dynamics on the team :(
moral of the story: taste is necessary; direct technical experience is mostly necessary, but nowhere near sufficient