Engineering Managers: What's in it for you? What drives you to manage a team and not just be an Individual Contributor?

Some tech guru: building software is a team sport.

80% of my team: ignores RFCs, avoids reviewing PRs, does not acknowledge messages (not even an emoji), calls a project they are working on "my project", later complains about everyone's mess.

But why can't you be both an outstanding engineer and a friendly-and-approachable team player? BUT WHY?!?

Middle management in some companies is just crowd control.

Dear [not so senior] software engineer:

Your strong opinions do NOT directly correlate nor contribute to your ability to influence and inspire others.

Be a mediating and conciliating force in your team.

An engineer's clinging focus on the dualistic right and wrong will prevent them from seeing the middle way, the way of the solution, the way of balance between all trade-offs.

What do you do when pull requests are enforced, but everyone is so fucking apathetic about reviewing code?