It’s part of an effort to have dedicated managers and dedicated engineers instead of hybrid roles.
This is being sold as an efficiency win for the sake of the stock price but it’s really just moved a few people around with the TLMs now 100% focused on programming.
I've also never really liked the idea of engineering managers who are technical enough to approve/veto tech decisions that team members make, since there's a power imbalance there. Even if your TLM is pushing a bad technology choice, you might not want to push back too hard because they're also responsible for your performance review and comp changes and whatnot.
So, no different from any other dedicate IC or manager at these companies?
>I've also never really liked the idea of engineering managers who are technical enough to approve/veto tech decisions that team members make, since there's a power imbalance there.
How is this different from any other manager or higher up making decisions? If your boss or boss's boss really wants something and you're not in a good market, it's never a good time to poke your head out.
Non-technical managers usually don't have strong opinions about which framework or database to use. Among engineers these decisions are usually made in a meritocratic way (weighted by who is the loudest sadly), but if your manager says "let's use X" it has a different weight than if your peer does.