> Tech proficiency is largely irrelevant once you go into management.
The lack of tech proficiency is even an advantage: in the companies where I worked, it is people who sucked badly at the technical job they had, who were moved to management, hoping that they might be less useless there. They are happy, they are paid twice as much as others who could fulfil their tasks, so it must mean they're good at something (something difficult to assess otherwise so money must be the right measurement). And then, since it is almost impossible to differentiate between a good and a bad manager, they could thrive a few decades going up in those roles, jumping from a company to another, boasting about the number of projects they 'made' (which are naturally more numerous than for the people who actually worked deeply on them).
Strange comment. How could you be a good data science leader if you are not a good data scientist? Could you equally be a good CFO if you didn't have technical skills in finance?
My best manager was my least technical manager. He was really good at getting the right work to the right people, controlling expectations, stopping the clients from burying us under requirements, stopping us from hiding behind poorly phrased requirements, communicating setbacks early to turn them into course-corrections rather than trainwrecks, and juggling lots of constraints and dependencies while planning and rescheduling. He wasn't even an interpersonal wizard, but he was really good at keeping his part of the organization running smoothly. Nothing fell through the cracks while he was in charge, and we were all better for it.
This lies in stark contrast to the three other managers I've had for any length of time, who have all been considerably more technical and considerably less good at those other things. They've been able to step in and help fight fires in a way that the above manager couldn't have, but they haven't been as good at keeping their part of the organization running smoothly. Thing is, the latter is a manager's job, and the former isn't.
I mostly see management and implementation as orthogonal skills, with the caveat that experience is industry-specific in both cases.
Im afraid that while this seems logical, it's not how the real world actually is. I've known of many heads of departments with rather grand titles and only a very small percentage of them even know the slightest of what goes on below them or why.
Heads of IT, software departments and even CIOs that cant even login.
In fact, they often move to similar roles in other companies because the new companies believe they must be good to be in that seniority of the current company. When in fact the current company just can't wait for them to go.
After a couple of these moves, they have a whole career of senior positions in immpressive companies.
I can think of about 10 examples within ftse10 and fortune25 companies right now that I've had the "pleasure" to work with.
>How could you be a good data science leader if you are not a good data scientist?
The job of a Data Science leader at a growing company is 50% recruiting and 50% sitting in planning meetings. Even if you started with good IC knowledge after a few years your skills will be rusty as hell. So assuming you know nothing and trusting your team and delegating is going to work infinitely better than trusting your own out of date skills.
edit: And yes, this is from personal knowledge, I've held such titles before and I've had a lot of offers for other such titles.
edit2: As a corollary, promoting someone to management just because they're a good IC is a really bad idea. You want your top ICs to stay ICs if possible. You want your managers to be people who actually can manage and want to manage.
I would say this is true for all mid-management and up. Tech proficiency is largely irrelevant once you go into management.