It's an extension of pretending that developer productivity can be measured in lines of code per day, as well as the managerial blindness to the fact that code can have negative value.

> Yeah but a manager can do those things. You don't need an engineer for that.

Can they really? Engineering is about keeping the whole picture in mind so that you know which lever to push and which to not push for a certain goal. Trying until you're lucky can get you to that goal, but it's costly and not sustainable. So you need someone that can work out a model for experimentation in a less costly manner.

Judgment in this case is about deciding which path to direct the project, tradeoffs is being aware that there are other paths that are better in some aspects. And responsibility is acknowledging that a bad decision will bear a personal cost.

Everyone does the above in their own domain. But I don't think I've ever see a manager wanting to do it in the engineering domain. It's more about pushing the engineer to accept the responsibility, but denying them the power of judgment.

Managers' jobs are more at risk here than the engineers'.