The dirty truth is that a lot of middle manager don't bring that much value and create artificial work. There is that narrative that started a decade ago that

The dirty truth is that a lot of middle manager don't bring that much value and create artificial work. There is that narrative that started a decade ago that we need empathetic people managers that are doing a completely different jobs than ICs, and that their role is extremely valuable. The narrative seems to push the idea that ICs and engineers are extremely bad at inter-personal communication and therefore that higher class of better communicators is required. I have never bought this and see a lot of middle manager doing busy work constantly syncing with other middle managers. The best companies I have worked for had big horizontal teams with technical managers. The worst companies have been hierarchical with multiple managers/directors all passing the buck to each other.