It’s not really about ‘leet code engineers’ getting into management but the perverse incentives involved in climbing up the corporate ladder.
It’s as if it doesn’t matter what project you pitch and what the fallout is as long as some KPI somewhere gets a boost. Just get your promotion and ride off into the sunset, someone else will deal with the aftermath.
It's not just about incentives. It's about selecting for the kind of people who succeed under those incentive structures.
Even if you're hiring a cross section of the population or a cross section of software developers or management professionals only a slice of it is gonna stick around long enough to influence the organization.
For example, you don't find a lot of Ron Swanson types working for insurance, the court system, or health and safety. Those personality types are either gonna find a new job, turn into a bitter shell of a person counting the days to retirement or go postal and finding a new job is obviously the superior option.
The comparison between Google and Microsoft (or whatever) is gonna be similar though the differences will be more nuanced. Same thing for big banks. Same for big oil. Same for big anything. You've got these differing corporate cultures and incentive sets and they select for different people.
It’s as if it doesn’t matter what project you pitch and what the fallout is as long as some KPI somewhere gets a boost. Just get your promotion and ride off into the sunset, someone else will deal with the aftermath.