I have about the same length of a career, and the majority of managers I have had have been poor. Except for one, the best managers just left me alone. The wors

I have about the same length of a career, and the majority of managers I have had have been poor. Except for one, the best managers just left me alone. The worst are the ones that try to help and be involved and caused great people to leave, screwed up projects, and caused a great deal of damage to organizations. However, on the opposite side, technical leaders are awesome. Most of mine have been great. They are team captains, leading through inspiration and excitement and performance. I love leaders. The push back to the office is at least 50% driven by managers that are freaking out because their uselessness has been revealed. Many orgs and people I know of have been performing better during the pandemic - now it is tough to correlate to overall remote performance, since the situation is different. In normal remote work, you can interact with other people easier, can visit your team on fun trips, and generally be more social, which has the downside that you aren't as focused on your work, either. Also, you don't have your kids at home, which is huge. But if I were running a company, I'd take notice at the fact that many managers can be cut, and that a good chunk of management is merely gaining and holding on to power via social manipulation. I've done management and leadership throughout my career, although predominantly I've been an IC, and I see managers taking credit for the good things that happen and believing they are responsible for them, and the opposite for the bad things. When in reality, many bad things are the managers fault, and rarely do they have much responsibility for the good things. I have a very dim view of management in general, although there are the rare really good ones, but they are almost always the "get out of the way" kinda.