Totally agree with everything you said here. The general response here is (understandably for HN) biased a bit too far in favor of coders. As a lifelong progr

Totally agree with everything you said here. The general response here is (understandably for HN) biased a bit too far in favor of coders. As a lifelong programmer who only reluctantly does management, I have to say that it sometimes seems just as hard for an engineer to understand what a good manager does as it is for a manager to understand what an engineer does. It's easy to make fun of a non-technical person because the terminology they don't understand is concrete but people management is every bit as difficult. Perhaps the problem is that it's relatively easy to weed out an incompetent programmer, but bad middle managers can often blend in or otherwise find ways to make themselves look good to upper management. In that sense a manager who codes is at least some kind of positive signal. But as a pure programmer I have to say this: two of the best managers I've had were not technical in any way shape or form. It's a mistake to think a good manager has to be technical in all cases. Good managers can add value in invisible ways dealing with the higher ups and shielding the team from politics and distraction. If the technical team is good and the manager has the appropriate level of trust then lack of specific technical knowledge need not always be a problem. As you say, it varies according to circumstance, but a lot of commenters here seem ignorant to the fact that there's more to the job than simply understanding the programmers world.