Well, let me back up from that and make this analogy. In a perfect world, there'd be no need for police because there'd be no criminals. There are good cops and

Well, let me back up from that and make this analogy. In a perfect world, there'd be no need for police because there'd be no criminals. There are good cops and bad cops but we can all agree that, in a perfect world, the job wouldn't need to exist. In practice, police can't do the job so well that they're no longer needed because the world is so big. There are always new criminals, and there are many sources of crime, and that's not the cops' fault. With management, whether that is true depends on the size and competency of the organization. With a small team, a good manager can get everyone aligned and then step back. With hundreds of people, maybe not. There will always be conflicts to resolve and problem employees to watch. A manager's job is "protect, direct, eject". The strong employees need to be steered away from and shielded from ("protect") the political messes that earnest high performers often fall into, and from the resentment that being good at their jobs (and being rewarded for it) may attract. They also need to be able to take risks and spread their wings. The average ones need to be kept on track ("direct"), and the incorrigible problem employees need to be fired ("eject"). If you do the job well, you won't have many problem employees (the "eject" category) because the corrigible or previously-unlucky ones you can fix, and the rare incorrigible ones you should fire. The mediocre employees (the "direct" category) will be mentored until they're good, and therefore in to the "protect" category, as well. So two of the three jobs (direct and eject) are finite and temporary (except for when the team acquires more people). As for "protect", who do high-talent employees need to be protected from? Executives and other managers; basically, anyone else who can hurt them. So, yes, in an ideal world there wouldn't be the "manager" job. In practice, it's different and you actually need them. Too many managers fall in love with the "direct" part of the job. They like telling people what to do. They ignore the "protect" part of it (because it can put them at personal risk, and because it's hard to do) and no one (except for a psychopath) enjoys the "eject" aspect. They get good at that one aspect and develop an approach that works reasonably well for middle-of-the-road employees but (a) doesn't handle the extremes, and (b) doesn't really allow for growth or progress (as in Scrum, where there's no allowance that one might graduate out of having to justify small amounts of one's own working time).