One thing I struggled with when I was a "manager" before going back to individual contributor is that at every job I've had this far - I have never worked directly for my manager nor when was I a manager did I directly oversee my reports.

This seems to be fairly common in tech and consulting. How am I supposed to succeed at a manager if I have no fucking clue what my reports are going to be working on?

I feel like this is a failure in either companies not knowing how to setup management for technical roles, or I was given 0 training on this and it resulted in me not knowing what the hell to do all the time with my reports.

The claim in this article is that my job was no longer to do work, but in every role where I reached manager I absolutely was still expected to do my own work. I just also had to vaguely guide some other person and give them reviews and feedback while never having worked with them in my life.

Maybe I was unlucky but these stints at management left a sour taste. I'm not even sure I would call my experience "management" except companies kept naming it that.