IDK, at many large orgs...there are developers that essentially communicate through "tickets" and "their lead"... and Def never talk to "business" people or customers. It's not very rare if you get a large enough org.
Are you referring to the work the managers are doing or the devs are doing as being invisible?
(Not all managers, this was a special degenerate case, but it's worth considering that different people have different goals/incentives/values. It's not always a straight line to "delivering customer value" that is only held up by a lack of people skills.)
In an organization of high-minded individuals, the information asymmetry goes both ways, I've been a manager and a dev and I tried to be high-minded and do my best to smooth that assymetry for the greater good in both roles.
But sometimes, especially the last 3-4 years since it got tough, there's a lot of people trying to hold on by any means necessary. Information asymmetry isn't the problem there, it's incentive assymetry. What if you're just not that good at tech and got promoted to 1st, maybe 2nd level manager in the good years? What's your incentive?
That's why I think skip-levels check-ins and direct reports regularly anonymously rating their manager (via HR) should be the starting place at all companies.
Otherwise, toxic (or just underperforming) managers stay in their positions longer than is good for the company.
There's an interesting parallel to the advice often given for "lean" startups, of never taking seriously the customers' feature requests, only their complaints. Most customers know their own pain points but aren't capable of suggesting good general solutions that can be incorporated into a product.
Disagree. I think most employees are qualified to judge whether their manager facilitates or hinders their team's work.
Servant-leader is one (among many competing) valuable manager traits because it does press managers to align part of their focus on enabling their team to get work done, instead of simply taking credit for work their team does without manager involvement.
Sure, you're going to get volatility in direct reports' rankings of their manager (versus an objective truth), but...
(a) You get that with manager rankings of their direct reports too
(b) Individual rankings aren't the signal: the signal is median ratings. If managers have entire teams that universally hate them, that's not noise