[aylmao]

One of my most productive sprints I ever had at a job was after a couple months working on an internal tool that was going nowhere. After being frustrated for a long time with a project's management, I cut the middle-man and went directly to the customer, did my own user research, brainstormed either on my own or independently with others, and kept direct contact with the users to keep a tight feedback loop when shipping features.

Management and middlemen can as much help velocity as they can hurt it. More hands doesn't always mean faster work ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Aeolun]

I think the problem is the middlemen feel compelled to add value somehow, since otherwise people would figure out that their job is pointless.

[shandor]

The adage "good leaders make themselves unnecessary" applies.

If you have people under you, or can coach your people to take parts of your responsibilities off you, I think that's a great outcome. If your ICs are so good that they can actually do that, you should give them a raise and be glad you get to focus on other things in the meanwhile.

Of course, if the manager is unable to then broader their own scope, they indeed become disposable.

[Aeolun]

Oh certainly. There are a lot of managers that add value. I was talking more about the 5 layers of confusion (product manager, project manager, business manager, business architect, designer) that exist between our customer and the developers. There may be more that I haven’t yet discovered.

We recently spent quite a while on developing a feature only to find out the customer didn’t actually want it.

[shandor]

Ouch. Sounds like your product manager and business manager are indeed not doing much more than warming their seats :)