A good manager is your shit shield. They’re doing their job well when you have no idea how much work they’re putting in to minimize the amount of bullshit you have to deal with day to day.
The only reason Product Managers exist is because the next level up wants to trade stocks all day.
There is a point where Taylorism does break down. I believe we are there in tech. As far as management is concerned.
In practice, I’ve found that to be detrimental rather than helpful.
I miss coding, I _want_ to jump in and knock out a ticket from time to time, but the reality is that when I try to do that I just get in the way. My role is not to be a developer, it’s to make sure that the developers who work for me are free and clear to do their jobs unimpeded.
The vast majority of my time is spent in meetings making sure that my devs don’t need to be there and I just slow everything down when I try to “help”.
Twitter is not all of tech.
What I’ve learned from being an engineer manager for a very large company is that shit comes from every direction, basically all the time. Up, down, side to side, diagonally, zig zags, big circles, you name it.
Most of my day, every day, is keeping track of it and only letting the things that actually matter to my team filter through.