[angersock]

That "overhead" is essential to keeping a team running.

Hiring means the right people get brought in and the talent pool grows and a positive culture (say, blameless post-mortems, learning and sharing, etc.) forms.

Firing means that people aren't getting booted on a whim and that when they are getting booted it's done quickly and efficiently.

Performance reviews help guarantee good pay or good feedback for the people on the team, and are what helps keep them from leaving.

Meetings are the way that you advocate for your team and where you can meatshield to keep the howling vortex of crazy that is business for making their life harder.

It's all "overhead", but that "overhead" is very important to the quality of life.

[kpithrowaway]

I really liked this answer. Thank you.

This is exactly how I've seen it - but I suppose the book was just very pessimistic.

People always like to point out the management-free organization that is Valve...but I think a lot of my anxiety around my servant leadership aspirations is that most of my friends are developers that are trying to convince me that I'd be more valuable as a coder...

...but as I've acted as an advocate for my team as a team lead, I've gotten a lot of good feedback. Everyone else seems to think I'm a good manager (at the team lead level) so I'm probably just stressing about a potential career change :)

Thanks!