Engineering managements job is to make sure the whole endeavor of building and maintaining the software is successful. In order to do this they must wield some power as necessary, but if everything is running smoothly as described above then it’s demotivating for them to be stepping on the toes of the cross-functional ICs (Eng, PM, DS).

This might make EM seem like a cushy job, but in practice things are always a mess at various levels, and a good EM needs to wade in and sort out all kinds of conflicts that can lead to entire teams outputs being wasted. To do a good job the EM must have solid technical death, good product and business understanding, and excellent listening and communication skills. More specific needs depend on the company, org and situation in question. Being a good engineering manager is incredibly difficult in large orgs, and it’s rare to find them giving the difficulty in assessing them and the resulting market for lemons making it viable career path to fail upwards (or at least sideways).

A manager’s job is to make themselves obsolete. This means hiring, retention, mentorship, training, sharing context, etc. until the team is self-sufficient.

Generally, managers work on ensuring the business keeps surviving. That’s their main responsibility. Staffing, retention, alignment of sales/ development, etc.

Most good management does that well in harmony with the product. Bad management focuses on that at the expense of the product.