As some others mentioned it depends on context. My project managers do a lot of shit I don’t want to do : handling budgets, discussing project scope with clients, handling authorization request to external APIs (I’m in a big company) and also most PO stuff (writing tickets and handling sprint ceremonies).

Sometime they are a bit annoying because they freak out about deadlines and ask question every 10min while you try to focus and actually solve the bug, but at least they are self aware that it is because they feel helpless in this kind of situation 😛

Also, more about the proxy thing, sometime I have to explain technical things that simplifies and then they will probably explain it again to clients with a second layer of simplification. But I usually never hear about this again, which probably means that they manage to reassure client and maybe add a bit of bullshit on parts that don’t really mater, which spares me a lot of time overall.

I see a lot of people saying that your managers are bad managers, but I think your organization also put them in a badly defined role.