[torben-friis]

>I mean: if he trusts you, and does what you ask, that's great. But I'd find very difficult to manage a team without understand their jobs. How can I help them in their job, and help them improve? What's my role?

For the managers I’ve had that work that way, the work is basically human shield.

Meetings with stakeholders, random corporate demands, bugs that people attempt to escalate more than they should because someone in the chain is particularly vocal… their job is to deal with that so programmers don’t have to.

Additionally, acting as coaches (improving team relations, solving friction between colleagues, etc) and acting as an artist’s representative for their programmers, playing the necessary work politics so that they get their raises and promotions.