I’ve seen the exact opposite in some companies. Great technical people who have no business managing, suddenly becoming a manager. It goes like this: Person X is much better performing than the average bear. Company wants to reward Person X, but he or she is already at the max level for a technical individual contributor: “Senior Software Engineer” which is one level above entry level “Software Engineer”. Since the company has no career growth for techies past Senior Software Engineer, they say “OK We are going to reward you for doing such a good job: you are now knighted as a manager.” They bob the sword up and down. “Now go off and do this entirely different thing than you’ve been doing!” Unsurprisingly, a lot of these new managers aren’t really great at managing.

I’ve had sw team managers open up to me and admit they didn’t want to be managing at all and hate it but that’s the only way to advance in your career so they do it. I’ve also seen mediocre engineers who have great personal and presentation skills (or potential) languish as “3rd engineer from the left” because they weren’t Wizard enough to be promoted to management. There’s a huge skill/function mismatch.