> The manager at my structural engineers can still calculate a beam size, he is better at it than his staff.
That sounds insane to me. I want my manager to be good and managing. If they are writing code, it's a misuse of their time and skills. If they are good at writing code and bad at managing, they shouldn't be a manager.
And that confuses me. There are so many posts on hn complaining about managers and the bs they bring, 1:1s you didn't ask for etc.
What does a manager even do in this world where they are non technical? I have never managed a large sw team tbf, but in smaller teams I did manage I had to do project management stuff. In my normal profession I manage a large team, but one of my big roles is being there to advise technically and make the big decisions. I can see why people find these EM jobs boring, you must have to invent things to do!
That sounds insane to me. I want my manager to be good and managing. If they are writing code, it's a misuse of their time and skills. If they are good at writing code and bad at managing, they shouldn't be a manager.