This is hard. Best case, your manager was someone who was good at what the team he managed did... and wanted to stop being good at that and waste all his time

This is hard. Best case, your manager was someone who was good at what the team he managed did... and wanted to stop being good at that and waste all his time in meetings. Ha. You have a valid point... and that is to say that leadership doesn't have to be from the managers only. But often they're the only ones who (because of all the damn meetings) have a full view of what's going on with the company, their competitors, and with the market as a whole. The amount of time I devote to not coding... it makes me good at things that aren't coding. The amount of time my trusted tech lead puts into coding and helping train junior devs (so they'll hit me up for raises) is also staggering. I miss having a hands-on job, but it's sort of a question of "who are you doing it for?" He's doing it for the staff, and I guess indirectly the company. But I would say I do it for the company, and when the company is healthy that indirectly helps the staff. You're going to need both kinds of leadership.