I don’t disagree with anything you’re saying.

What I wrote was based on my personal experience, managing engineers on product teams and how I approached the role as manager.

We owned the products we developed and maintained and as a team we enjoyed great autonomy, and so we were spared customers/clients asking for the ridiculous, and I can probably count on one hand (ok, maybe two hands) the times we just had to do something because corporate said so.

We always pushed for engineers’ involvement in product and feature development, planning/roadmaps, and they did indeed have great influence over the what and the how. Push back from engineers on products’ suggestions/ideas/plans were frequent, and attention was paid.

This was for a company in Norway, where perhaps top down management isn’t as prevalent as in many other places, and employees are typically encouraged to speak up and get involved. Again, in my experience.

I found that being there to support and assist my engineers, not micro managing them, gave great results in terms of team culture and work satisfaction. I made it clear that I would always have their backs as long as they didn’t intentionally fuck something up.

I fully realize this isn’t the case everywhere, nor even typical.

All said, I really enjoyed being a manager. On some level it triggered a father’s instincts in me, and I took great pride in looking after people and seeing what they were capable of building as a team.