Thanks for the article. I agreed with a lot of it. A few thoughts:<p>&gt; Your work is MORE important than any individual programmer because you are a force multiplier.<p>I disagree. Your senior developers should all be force multipliers and it isn&#x27;t about more vs less important. They are simply different roles.<p>In the short term (1-2years) a great manager is the easiest person to replace in a team because a great manager focuses more on strategy than tactics - although there is always a bit of both.<p>&gt; You are unique in your group; you are their manager and leader.<p>All the great managers I&#x27;ve worked with had one thing in common: they weren&#x27;t managers or leaders in any day to day traditional sense.<p>I don&#x27;t want my manager to be the main person talking to our customers or trying to prioritise work. Etc etc. I want them to fix&#x2F;improve the culture.<p>E.g.
&gt; Ensuring the team has the best tools possible.<p>This doesn&#x27;t mean the manager should be picking the tools.<p>It also doesn&#x27;t mean the manager should be getting particular tools authorised&#x2F;purchased. I can write a better business case than my manager for any particular tool I need.<p>A great manager might instead create a culture where no business case is required for tool purchases under $500.<p>My last manager actually put any tool purchases we wanted on his <i>personal</i> credit card, no questions asked, because he couldn&#x27;t get any organisational support. He then did all the legwork to get reimbursed.<p>And that is clearly leadership. But its not leadership in a day to day sense. It did however help create a really good atmosphere and we were incredibly productive as a team.