Sure, and I'm a staff+ level engineer who has worked at darling unicorns and big media/tech and made a ton of money. I earned that equity payoff. Now I'm working on my own projects and paying for myself to live in SF, so you're free to have whatever opinion.
I know what I'm saying, and out of a dozen plus managers I've worked with over just the last 6 years (re-orgs because they have way too much time on their hands) only 2 have been excellent, and 1 somewhat all right. It isn't my fault that even with terrible engineering managers, I managed to never get below the max rating on any performance review. I know what I know, and I'm good at it.
The bigger companies get, the worse quality of talent that comes in. Most late stage+ employees are there to rest, vest, and cruise. Don't be naive.
The worst part of this is the more and more levels of management that get put in. People start coming in who have spotty technical understandings, but talk a whole lot that sways people who only need a high level understanding of what is going on. Imo this is due to people who cannot operate efficiently nor in a lean manner. Everything needs to be overly complex for them, to prove they’re something.
Again, I'm giving my experience as a competent engineer and I at one point managed 4 people for a few months before I stopped because I was leaving meetings that were a waste of fucking time with other managers. Literally people stroking each other's ego in a passive aggressive way instead of talking business and ensuring their teams succeed. Not to mention the ways they talked about their reports and literal games on how promotions work.
I am super passionate about removing the unnecessary complexity bloat and drama that bad management leads to.