“Programming is mostly thinking” is one of these things we tell ourselves like it is some deep truth but it’s the most unproductive of observations.

Programming is thinking in the same exact way all knowledge work is thinking:

- Design in all it’s forms is mostly thinking

- Accounting is mostly thinking

- Management in general is mostly thinking

The meaningful difference is not the thinking, it’s what are you thinking about.

Your manager needs to “debug” people-problems, so they need lots of time with people (i.e. meetings).

You are debugging computer problems, so you need lots of time with your computer.

There’s an obvious tension there and none of the extremes work, you (and your manager) need to find a way to balance both of your workloads to minimize stepping on each others toes, just like with any other coworker.