[0xbadcafebee]

Seriously.

A manager is responsible for controlling, administering and maintaining the work being done by their subordinates. A big chunk of that is determining what work is yet to be done, if it's on time, what needs to be done to support the existing work, communicating with other teams, doing research, quashing harmful discourse and building morale. They organize, prioritize and double-check the tasks assigned and meet with their subordinates to ensure everything is going smoothly. They plan, develop, monitor, communicate, and assess their employees and their work. And of course they attend countless, constant meetings.

If as a manager you can do all that and then have 2.5-3.5 hours a day left to write code, bravo.

[wisty]

OK, but how do they know what needs to be done?

A baseball coach knows if the pitcher isn't doing so well, because he's watched the games. How does a manager know if the new API is unwieldy, or if errors in one component are causing serious grief?

I mean, you can ask employees to blame their peers, but some won't want to, and some will be a little too eager.

[peterwwillis]

There is more going on in baseball than that. Similarly, there is more going on in software dev team management than that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coach_%28baseball%29