My boss has told me more than once that his goal is to get the people under him to fill the role he's currently filling as our direct manager. This is, accordi

My boss has told me more than once that his goal is to get the people under him to fill the role he's currently filling as our direct manager. This is, according to him, the only way he can move upward. He currently does a decently large amount of work for us as a team, but he's trying to shift that work onto us, because as you're pointing out here, cooperative and talented people can indeed self-manage. The problem he encounters is when that doesn't work out because no group is perfect, and frankly we're probably not ready to manage ourselves quite yet. But I think you're onto something here, and I also think every one of the managers who wrote READMEs in this submission would agree with you. From a logistical standpoint, someone has to attend all those meetings with other teams, with the leaders of the company to hear what they're thinking and translate it for the rest of the engineers, and make sure the boring stuff like vacation time, sick leave, etc. are being looked after. It's not really about being in charge/calling shots, it's about taking a group of talented and smart people, and making sure they're getting the info they need to keep build cool stuff.