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morfinx:
Suppose you have a senior lead design engineer at AMD designing a new processor. He should know how the design department works, how to schedule and lead project design reviews for this new processor, how to coordinate junior engineers under him, how to adhere to the company’s unique design philosophy, the verification department’s idiosyncrasies, etc. Basically, he oversees the entire project but doesn’t actually do all the detailed paper pushing work such as lure contracts or sell ideas because that’s what the managers do. To replace him, you would need someone who is an experienced microprocessor design engineer, who also knows all about the AMD design department and also knows how to implement particular design philosophies.</p>
<p>However, to replace a super-smart senior manager, the person in charge of managing the budget and selling ideas, you can probably hire another management guru from another company like Intel, and he can pick up on the task after a short period of time by following the management notebooks. The only type of irreplaceable manager is someone…</p>
<p>Surely by now you’ve noticed my sarcasm. The axe swings both ways.
The department I work in at Boeing, the managers take care of the design reviews, scheduling, and the coordination of junior engineers. The technically oriented lead engineers usually just do the difficult algorithms and present their results to the managers. Perhpas this is different from company to company.</p>