Fwiw though - a decade ago when I was a sysadmin I had a manager that I was certain never did anything.
And then he was replaced.
And then... We realized how much politics, uncertainty, churn, screaming, changing requirements, ambiguous priorities and other carp he protected us from :-/
Not saying it's the case with your manager. But managers have duties roles and priorities I for one hadn't always appreciated.
> And then... We realized how much politics, uncertainty, churn, screaming, changing requirements, ambiguous priorities and other carp he protected us from :-/
Indeed, have experienced that. At my best job experience ever, there was zero politics or distractions, I could focus all day long on interesting and relevant technical problems. I was both very happy and extremely productive.
And then.. my manager left. Whoa! The following months were insane mudslinging and relentless politics thrown at us in the team, could barely get any work done. Left the company soon after.
Turns out our previous manager was absorbing and firewalling all that from us so we could be happy and productive.
A great manager is like a great security team. You'll never notice what they're doing until they're not there.
Almost every bad manager I've had basically lacked at least two of those last three things if not all three.
I will say, the one big advantage of a technical manager is they can often be used as a good rubber duck for logistics around changes. Should we do {A, B, C} or {X, Y, Z}? You can get into the technical with them and explain the intricate trade-offs of the decision and how that might impact things. Their technical and political knowledge of the situation can give very good clarifying answers.
Over years I've noticed like 80% of those is because other managers are terrible and it so happens that the dept. I'm in takes some of the fallout of their mess.
It's interesting you should say this because this is one of the categories of Bullshit jobs as defined by David Graeber in his book. And incidentally only y'day I was listening to him on a podcast[1] speaking about BS jobs.
His favourite example is corporate lawyers. Companies are forced to hire them just because other companies have them and are in fear of getting sued. I hadn't thought of managers to fall in this category, which makes sense.
[1] https://podcasts.apple.com/in/podcast/srsly-wrong/id87229289...
Same with the way patents are used really.
Enabling people to be fully self directed and successful is a rare skill. Often it is done by diminishing their own importance; putting you on a good path and then getting out of your way; and giving you all the glory
For many, they could be a dream manager ;)
Take shocks coming down, going up, sideways and to keep the ride smooth for as long as possible.
I also saw him stand up for the team when needed.
He got kicked out of his job. Along with the whole team.
One of the lessons I've learned though is that.. It's not all red tape and inefficiency. Big light bulb moment for me was realizing that users, customers, stakeholders, clients, etc, simply and validly may have different priorities and goals. That's not necessarily disfunction. We are not ants. But it's the manager's job, not sysadmin or coders, to resolve those different goals and help provide unambiguous and stable requirements to the team. This may not immediately be obvious as contributing value to a person building a server or coding a function. It certainly wasn't to me... Until it didn't happen anymore :-)