What managers really do

An excerpt, describing the fragmentation of managers' time:

Folklore: The Manager is a reflective, systematic planner. The evidence on this issue is overwhelming, but not a shred of it supports this statement.

Fact: Study after study has shows that managers work at an unrelenting pace, that their activities are characterized by brevity, variety, and discontinuity, and that they are strongly oriented to actions and dislike reflective activities.

Consider this evidence:

- Half the activities engaged in by the five chief executives of my study lasted less than nine minutes, and only 10% exceeded one hour.

- A study of 56 U.S. foremen found that they averaged 583 activities per eight-hour shift, an average of 1 every 48 seconds.

Essentially, managers put out fires.

Whenever I start feeling underemployed and unappreciated as a programmer, I look at what they do all day and feel thankful that I get paid to listen to some tunes, crank out a few lines of code and go home (where the real work begins).

The senior technical contact at my day job is a very experienced and accomplished programmer; however his entire day is spent traveling from one location to the next in meeting after meeting (a familiar story for many, I'm sure).

He dabbles in our project from time to time, and I think that's his only release from the mutual appreciation rituals he endures every day.

Paul Graham's take on it: http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html

If this is of interest to you, it's worth reading Peter Drucker, who makes a much more solid, well argued, nuanced case for these sorts of ideas.