It's not true that in all companies you have to chose between tech and management. It's true in some companies. But at many companies lead and director roles are very hands on.

At Stream a lead is 80% technical, a director roughly 50% sometimes more. And even VPs and up are still somewhat technical.

I think the idea of management without technical excellence track is just misguided. Small teams, technical excellence, and leaders who can do the work is the right way.

I agree that Managers/Directors should have a deep technical experience but having them contribute code to the day to day development is not a good situation for anyone (especially the companay).

There are some different aspects to this; The director will have many other responsibilities and may not be able to provide to provide the research/expertise required to produce a good code solution to the issue at hand and integrated with the rest of the system.

The rest of the project team may be delayed with waiting for the directors code and may well find it difficult to co-ordinate with the directors level of knowledge (which is perhaps out of date). In general, criticising the director for delay or bad code is not likely to be a career-enhancing path.

In small company/start-ups, this a common condition that does need to be remedied. Directors/managers have significant responsibilities that needs to come first rather than feed their own ego/desires. Hire good people and direct them to scale the business, your job is different now and you need all your skill/time/resources to do it well.

In short, personally been there a number of times and it wasn't good for anyone. But we struggled on.

> It's not true that in all companies you have to chose between tech and management. It's true in some companies. But at many companies lead and director roles are very hands on.

I‘ve seen bad companies where it is true, but in good companies typically not true. Look for example Peter Norvig, 100% hands on technical type, but in a high management position.

there is a difference between "technical" and "writing code every day".

c-levels, VPs, and directors can be very technical, but rarely write code. team leads definitely do, though it may be only 3 days a week, and rest is org/planning/pr reviews.

only at small companies does the CTO write code. our cto has written plenty of deep code back in the day that enabled the business to scale to its current size.

> management without technical excellence track is just misguided

It's different technical excellence.

What's not given proper weight is that it's different technical excellence. Roles seen as "more management" demand system-level understanding and technical knowledge. And a technical knowledge that includes what many see as not technical such as awareness of people or finance dynamics. They can, should be seen as technical aspects. A more senior, "more management" role has different levers to use to make projects come through. And these are different higher level projects. A more senior role is also free to juggle reports who specialize in this or that. If you hate or you are bad at task scheduling, have someone do that for you. If you are not great at writing speeches, etc, etc.

Among the ways you can prepare for that: (1) find at least one mentor (someone at least two steps more senior who can guide you on what to think about and on how things work. If the people two steps up in your company are bros... your mentors don't have to be in your same company.) (2) Consider what's missing to your skillset - and that's not planning software but maybe it is.

There is also a difference between being a capital-L Leader, and leadership. Healthy companies have space for technical leadership that is different from being on the management track to being CEO.