I'm going to assume the article was in the context of software development.
Doesn't it ignore a large swat of people? What about all the other business partners, operators and users/customers?
Generally the managers job is to engage will all these other parties and identify their needs, evaluate if the team can help them with their problems or not, find out what possible solutions could be done and what the cost of it would be, justify if the team should grow or shrink based on what people would like the team to accomplish, and set expectations and priorities for what the team will deliver each quarter/year. At the same time, make sure the team can focus on delivering on those commitments, by both understanding well what the ask is, eliminating blockers they face, and keeping their distractions on tengential things to a minimum.
They also need to listen to each individual reports own career aspirations and desire, and see how they can support their growth, as well as evaluate their performance within the team and provide feedback on that regard, while also fighting for those that are exceeding to get promoted or receive raises within the organization.
It does mean they don't "do the work" of what is eventually delivered, but it doesn't mean their work wasn't impactful.
As a team lead, I'm exposed to that half of the world as I need to support the manager in this process, and I'm also involved in "doing the work". So I feel I can respect both sides, and you'll know when you have a bad manager, because more of that work will fall on the engineers and that'll take away from them "doing the work", and you'll start to feel like the team has no direction, no idea what it should do or where it wants to go, etc.
Edit: You'll also see that in companies where the lead engineer ends up doing this due to not having a dedicated manager, they can no longer contribute at what they are good at "design and implementation of software".
Doesn't it ignore a large swat of people? What about all the other business partners, operators and users/customers?
Generally the managers job is to engage will all these other parties and identify their needs, evaluate if the team can help them with their problems or not, find out what possible solutions could be done and what the cost of it would be, justify if the team should grow or shrink based on what people would like the team to accomplish, and set expectations and priorities for what the team will deliver each quarter/year. At the same time, make sure the team can focus on delivering on those commitments, by both understanding well what the ask is, eliminating blockers they face, and keeping their distractions on tengential things to a minimum.
They also need to listen to each individual reports own career aspirations and desire, and see how they can support their growth, as well as evaluate their performance within the team and provide feedback on that regard, while also fighting for those that are exceeding to get promoted or receive raises within the organization.
It does mean they don't "do the work" of what is eventually delivered, but it doesn't mean their work wasn't impactful.
As a team lead, I'm exposed to that half of the world as I need to support the manager in this process, and I'm also involved in "doing the work". So I feel I can respect both sides, and you'll know when you have a bad manager, because more of that work will fall on the engineers and that'll take away from them "doing the work", and you'll start to feel like the team has no direction, no idea what it should do or where it wants to go, etc.
Edit: You'll also see that in companies where the lead engineer ends up doing this due to not having a dedicated manager, they can no longer contribute at what they are good at "design and implementation of software".