Doesn't the article scream loose grasp on technical side though? Maybe that's the author rather than Larson if they're different, but bits like how it turned out the senior engineer was right to be against automation, because they were using Ruby, come on. (I'm not saying the guy was wrong, it just seems poorly explained/understood.)

I'm not even sure how much I think it matters though, I think more important is that you know where you stand in terms of reporting, and that you're able to 'code-switch' as it were appropriately for a less technically inclined person. Are engineering leaders that 'understand things at a much lower level of detail' really 'the best', or are they just the ones that make it easiest for us?

(Maybe you could argue there's not a difference, but I don't think it goes without saying that the ability to communicate to technical & non-technical alike is not a valuable skill, or that it shouldn't be required.)