I am seeing a lot of programmers turning away from management and administration roles. They want to build stuff. And as a result, a lot of these positions are filled by non-technical people. I fail to see how they add value. Is scheduling meetings, booking offsites and other administrative work enough to justify their role?

  I fail to see how they currently add value and is scheduling meetings, booking offsites and other administration works enough for their role?


Don't underestimate the amount of interaction your manager does with other departments. They handle budgets, training plans, HR paperwork. They protect the developers from getting sucked into meetings with other departments and provide a unified front for your group.

In short, their job is to protect self-motivated developers from all of the other demotivating things that exist in business.
