[danjac]

While "middle manager" is often nowadays a negative term, having a good manager between yourself and the upper management/customer can be a godsend. They can act as a bullshit filter, they can deal with bureaucratic busywork, they can get you whatever resources you need, fight for more funding/people for your team, help out with HR stuff and so on. You need these people so you can get on with "great engineering".

[amznthrowaway5]

Those people should not be paid nearly as much as the actual value producers.