Is the Director of Engineering a Management Position?

The Director of Engineering is a management position. I manage the people, I manage their careers, I help them grow and I also have a strategic vision of where we need to be. So much more long term planning and making sure you're not surprised by changes in technology. It's review time at Microsoft and it's just one-on-ones and evaluations for days. Sometimes it's all I do is meetings and that's no fun because I assume you look at the code at least to refresh yourself sometimes. "I actually strongly believe that first line managers like myself should be writing code on a daily basis"