That sounds great, but if your output was to develop new versions of an OS to support multi-processor configurations and memory modes, you were making a product

That sounds great, but if your output was to develop new versions of an OS to support multi-processor configurations and memory modes, you were making a product whose customers were engineers like yourself. I am not saying that to take away from the accomplishment, as another said: you were the engineering manager. A manager is often the delivery system for all the messages that engineers aren't interested in: The fickle customer, the imperfect or unattainable vision of the enterprise, fiscal demands.. Often managers are delivering you unpleasant, distracting, or annoying news. But if they are good they are giving you a lot less of that distraction then if the org were flat.