A good friend (and ex boss) is a VP of engineering at a very large publicly traded &quot;ex-startup&quot; he has no engineering background outside of what he&#x27;s picked up managing engineering  teams (and I&#x27;ve seen him hack around every so often).  At the Director or VP level in many companies managing engineers doesn&#x27;t always mean you&#x27;re actually an engineer, and in fact you may not want your best engineers in those roles.