How long are these Q&A sessions, would you say the work of ICs getting blocked isn’t worth having the manager be able to eg: advocate for that work upwards?
We recently had an hour long session in the middle of the day with the entire team dedicated to explaining to the EM what exactly happened during a recent incident (a fairly sophisticated attack - not a simple bug, to be fair). Then next week another hour long session with the entire team AND a hefty handful of other people where EM regurgitated what we had explained to him. Fine I guess, except I'm pretty sure most people in that "retro" meeting already knew way more about what happened than EM did. So ~40 minutes explaining something to people who did not need an explanation.
I wonder if, in this case, 10 is too few, and it'd been better with a technical person and manager at the same time? Maybe everyone manages themselves pretty well?