[mhss]

> Management that is not deeply aware of what their reports are doing is either unnecessary or incompetent.

I am biased as a manager, but, for context, I was a senior IC for a long time before management though. I also transitioned first being a TL/manager "deeply aware" (reviewing most PRs, coding large parts myself, etc) and then eventually as a more traditional manager.

Sometimes management can be unnecessary or incompetent, but also you're excluding the possibility of companies trying to find a reasonable organizational balance of management costs. A manager that is deeply aware or involved, is also a manager that cannot manage more than maybe 5-6 people. If you want a manager to manage more people and focus in coaching, cross-team dependencies, unclogging stuck projects, roadmap building, etc; you rarely can have a manager doing IC work still and that means they cannot be involved in every PR or conversation their team is involved. If you give autonomy to the team members to make decisions and progress, by definition you won't be involved nor "deeply aware" all the time. Your 1:1s are an opportunity to address this divergence and a brag document helps feed your 1:1 with your manager to bring them up to date.