You always have politics. Managers tend to be political ninjas, so they make it worse. I've been programming professionally for over 25 years at this point, worked at many places, and I couldn't tell you what value a manager brings. I know what they do - which is hold meetings that take time away from real work, and ask people "is it done yet". But I've never seen anything get done faster or better as a result of something a manager did.
I'm genuinely curious to hear from people who have had what they consider effective management, what did the manager do to make your work better?
Exactly - they are political ninjas, yes, but they ethically view themselves as the feudal lord super-samurai whose job it is to defend and develop all the young paduan samurai under his watch. Nothing wrong with politics if done in a kind, ethical, "win friends and influence people" kind of way
Some of the most important work that a good manager does goes unseen by their team. I've been a manager and now I'm an IC so I've seen both sides. There is a lot of shielding and pushing back that managers do to protect their teams. Unless the manager tells their team about everything they've been doing behind the scenes, the team has no idea.
You say that you've never seen anything get done faster or better as a result of something a manager did but you've probably had managers that were working preventing interference, saying no to last minute requirement changes, pushing back on deadline changes, etc.
I've had good managers make decisions to steer the effort efficiently. Also, they can act as tie breakers in disputes so that reasonableness can previal.
In government, good managers ensure the myriad roadblocks that inevitably surface are properly dealt with before their direct reports even know it existed.
One of the best roles of a good manager is insulating their employees from the political bullshit that goes on above them. One example that happened to a coworker of mine is that something happened in an open source project they were the maintainer of that caused VP-level executives to blow up at him, so the manager told them to take they day off and let him deal with angry executives instead.
I'm genuinely curious to hear from people who have had what they consider effective management, what did the manager do to make your work better?