Earlier quoted context omitted.
I meant specifically things only a manager does. For instance, the presentations he does are for director/vp level, hefty slide deck stuff. Of course the more senior ICs do more than simply code AFA talk across teams and divisions to scope and define work, present workshops and presentations to the team and cross-departments, contribute to architecture decisions, present as SMEs across various parts of the stack, and…
Those presentations to the higher levels didn’t really happen because the corporate structure was very flat. Also, I would not expect those to take up all that much time. You may have worked at a lot of places, but your experience is still only a tiny slice of the different shops out there. My experience is likewise limited, and I acknowledge that such light touch management is probably very rare, but it can and does…
Don't be too certain about that :-) I recognize the things you mention from my first job, I had a manager / CTO who were like her. (This was a 20-30 ppl startup, high trust, not many meetings)