I think you may have misunderstood my point. Being a great teaching professor is an invaluable contribution to students lives and the world, but it is “absolutely worthless” as far as promotion and tenure is concerned.
My point is not “don’t respect teaching profs”, quite the opposite in fact: Recognize that the teachers that had an impact on you in university that had an impact on you not only to no career benefit, but potential to their own professional detriment.
Same goes for truly great technical managers. All the technical work they enable is through their own personal devotion and at best causes no professional growth, at worst takes away energy that should be spent elsewhere.
"Managing down isn't actually that hard to get the hang of if you have strong technical skills and reasonable communications skills. But managing down is very similar to being a good teaching professor: absolutely worthless and largely done at your own peril."
If your reply above is what you meant to say, that was not at all clearly communicated.
