Can you explain why you made a point to say "supervise students"? From your statement it looks like there is no expectation to do original/independent research. Is that the standard practise too?
I of course did supervise students. This does vary by field, but done right each student needs about 5 hours a week one-on-one direct enagagement (more at the beginning of their degree and less at the end). Less time than this and the student will struggle.
You can of course do what some of the big empire builders do and just let the student sink or swim on their own, but this is not good for the student. Good supervision is very time consuming, but probably the most rewarding aspect of being an academic.
> researcher (well supervision of people actually doing the research
You explicitly distinguished the two.
And thank you for your answers.
Instead, a professor is usually spending more time supervising research. This is typically because a professor has multiple students, and as danieltillett explained, they already have many other time commitments. But this is also because the point of the entire process is for the students to become independent researchers. That is, the research supervision is teaching their students how to be researchers. In my experiences, professors in science and engineering tend towards being managers rather than being in the lab or at the keyboard.
I presume danieltillett made this distinction because there is a difference between supervising and doing the research.