As a middle manager, my purpose is to mange the employees under me, as upper management can’t possibly manage that man individual contributors. My time is primarily used to identify and resolve blockers or challenges that could prevent my team from hitting their goals. And then report on my teams performance all the time. And try to keep people from pestering people on my team so they can get actual work done. But then I have to do other “HR” stuff too, like creating and performing quarterly reviews, hiring and firing, one on ones, etc… I can’t speak for the middle managers at your company, but I am constantly jumping from one thing to the next… It is tiring. I get to deal with all the sh!t and pass all the accolades on to the individual performers on my team that get things done.