[BackBlast]

> A non technical manager can know very well what's valuable to the product/company. That they don't believe their team on the value of a specific piece of technical work to enable that seems like something else is at play here (lack of trust).

Trust is a difficult commodity to build, a lot of company culture issues stem from lack of trust. It's particularly key to the manager/team relationship.

When you have a non-technical manager directly over technical teams it's particularly difficult to build trust. People, emotionally, want to have someone really understand them. Someone who doesn't, at a fundamental level, understand the actual work you're doing is going to be at a disadvantage as the work is crux of the purpose of the interaction.

Not to say that it is impossible, someone with well above average people reading and listening skills can still build that trust and get it. But it's definitely going to be more difficult than someone who really knows the turf.