>The engineers would give me highly technical explanation I couldn’t understand. This would frustrate me because I did not add much value and distracted them.
I have a rule which avoids this situation happening, ever, and its a controversial one, but bear with me:
* NEVER accept management from someone who cannot do your job.
This rule, hard and fast, has saved my ass so many times - and every single time I've broken it, things have been more painful than they should be.
Seriously, think about it. How can someone who isn't qualified to do your job, actually manage you? Only if 'management' is an administrative-only task - i.e. "report your hours worked - I don't care about anything else".
But if you put this rule into action and insist that your managers are able to do your job, you have a very strong, very stable organizational structure. This doesn't mean the manager has to do your job - just that they can, if they need to.
You can't manage things you don't understand. So never accept management from people who don't understand the job. And if that is not happening in the organization, you've got another problem: HR are just chair-stuffing. INSIST that this not be how your org is run.