A good friend (and ex boss) is a VP of engineering at a very large publicly traded "ex-startup" he has no engineering background outside of what he's picked up managing engineering teams (and I've seen him hack around every so often). At the Director or VP level in many companies managing engineers doesn't always mean you're actually an engineer, and in fact you may not want your best engineers in those roles.

I would've thought having technical experience and the ability to get your hands dirty would be a requirement of being VP of Engineering (or similar). Two things that immediately come to mind is the ability to make competent technical decisions and estimate required time/resources required. Strong engineering/technical background is a requirement for the two. How do you even get into this leadership role without having the foundation?

I completely agree that you may not want your best engineers in this role because interfacing with and leading people is a completely separate skill, but I would still think any competent exec with a technical title will have some technical experience.

Constantly. At least one a month. It's as strange to me as it is to you.

What's worse, the people interviewing me know even less than I do. The patchwork of bullshit runs deep in San Francisco.

I have written code full-time for the past 7 years and been an engineer for the past 13, but have never maintained a "production app". There are large numbers of software engineers operating in fields where there is no such concept.

What is that exactly? I'm really curious. Presumably the code you write gets used by someone, right?