[sharken]

Some excellent points on the challenges of a manager. I would think that managing the people side of things can be hard as well, unless its a matrix organization.

As an engineer I agree that "time spent in a role" does not say anything about the quality of an employee.

That combined with the mindset of someone who clocks in the hours, adds up to a person that can be hard to work with. At least if your own mindset is that you want to be good at what you are doing.

An example of that is a manual task that is holding the team back, but nobody is really pursuing how to get rid of that task or automating it.

Anyways, many good points and it definitely sounds like you are one of the great managers out there.