In reality, that generally is how it works... In the companies I've been involved with, the VP of eng typically was a coder who possessed all the qualities the commenter above mentioned. They eventually moved up to that role because that were great as seeing the big picture, making intelligent decisions on how to delegate time and engineers into prioritizing bug fixes, new features, and maintenance/improvements that work the best for the company, and managing those people/decisions. They end up spending more time managing and less time coding, but it's generally for the best.