A long-standing Silicon Valley norm, restated by Cagan as part of "Founder Mode" Misread as License to Micromanage — the Real Lesson Is Founder-Style Leadership: a manager should have real expertise in the function they manage, not just general management skill. A design manager should be a good designer; an engineering manager should be a good engineer.
This underpins why founder-style leadership treats coaching as inseparable from craft — see Coaching-on-the-Sidelines Leadership Model — a manager without functional expertise cannot credibly coach on the problem or push back on proposed solutions during discovery.
Cagan applies this Apple mantra as a hiring/promotion filter: a manager should themselves be striving to be a great practitioner in the discipline they lead (engineering, design, product), not occupy a purely administrative "office" role — "Experts lead experts." He treats it as one of several large-company proof points, alongside Amazon's leadership principles and Google's own leadership philosophy (substance first, coaching, empowerment, outcomes), that this is normal practice at scale, not a startup-only luxury.