I've had three managers at Google, and all of them fit this model. My managers have: * Handled comp planning and negotiating with upper management for headcoun

I've had three managers at Google, and all of them fit this model. My managers have: * Handled comp planning and negotiating with upper management for headcount * Escalated technical disagreements my team had with other teams * Provided career advice and coaching to me and their other reports * Made me actually take time at the start and end of the quarter to grade performance towards quarterly goals, and set goals for the new quarter. Importantly, it was the engineers setting and grading the goals. Not all managers at Google follow this model - some are active software engineers that act as manager for a small team of junior engineers, some are tech lead + manager but not writing much code, and I'm sure some are bad, because Google is a big place and humans aren't uniform. But all eng managers that I've heard of have a strong software engineering background - there are no pointy haired bosses. These are not necessarily the views of my employer, I'm not speaking for them.