I agree strongly with this. I worked as a consultant on a zombie project where the out-of-his-depth PM held a 2-3 hour phone call every morning with a team of 1

I agree strongly with this. I worked as a consultant on a zombie project where the out-of-his-depth PM held a 2-3 hour phone call every morning with a team of 15 as his way of moving development along. Needless to say, that didn't work. I was billing a pretty great rate for myself at the time, and for a while sort of enjoyed just reading HN or a book on someone else's dime every morning, but eventually I realized it was sapping my will to do good work of any kind -- either paid or for myself. I found a good stopping point and left.