It's most likely a bell curve

To answer your nitpick with a nitpick, averages can work that way. Do you know the distribution of engineering managers well enough to say that most aren't "about average"? GP was making a claim about engineering managers.. not about all averages.

But regardless, that's missing the point. The point is that the distribution of engineering manager quality is likely pretty similar to that of any other role. So claiming that "there are way more bad engineering managers than good ones" seems likely to be untrue unless you also believe that about nearly any other engineering/management/product position.

> To answer your nitpick with a nitpick, > averages can work that way. Do you know > the distribution of engineering managers > well enough to say that most aren't > "about average"?

Sorry it hit a sore spot; especially in a community such as this we should at least try to speak accurately regards statistics.

That's not what I'm saying. The OP is stating that it holds for averages. It doesn't. It might in this case but we don't have the stats.

The statement just doesn't make sense - you can say exactly the same about a random value. It will hold in some cases. Average too. However it will not hold in all cases.