How to feel worthwhile as a manager when my people are doing all the work?

The work of a manager is not the work of those managed. If you think what your reports do is "all the work," it means you're missing things.

- Do your reports have all the resources they do to accomplish the mission? If not, what do they need? Why don't they have it?

- What are the sources of friction that impede mission accomplishment? How many can you get rid of?

- What requirements are accreting? What's your plan to keep the relentless march of mandatory trainings and mindless powerpoints at bay?

- What's the tech refresh schedule? Do developers get better computers than managers? In other words, do tech resources go toward those in positions of political influence or toward those who really need them? Can you influence this?

If you don't have answers to these questions, then not is it not true that your people are doing all the work, but there's a significant amount of work to be done that nobody is doing.

> Manager successes and failures play out over a much longer period of time than the successes and failures of writing and debugging code, and you can only indirectly trace your impact.

Really important point! Being a manager requires a lot more patience. You try things out, but the feedback loop is very slow.

I always wonder what is my manager doing when I am out in the trenches? All he does is ask for status reports multiple times a day.

Without reading the article, if your people are doing all the work then by definition you are not worthwhile, and probably shouldn't feel that way.