Then you've never managed developers. Speaking as one, developers are not always right, and as human beings they are subject to emotion. Emotions make people hard to manage. Period.
Seeing the difference between effective and ineffective management, and the frequency of the latter, I'm not convinced it's easy either.
Some developers aren't great at gathering requirements, estimating costs, triaging requests, saying no, or any number of other things... if only because they'd rather be coding. And that's not even getting into what they can mess up when it comes to the actual development portion.
A good technical manager can help cover for their shortcomings, and let them focus on their interests - what they're good at. They're not just an ablative meat shield.
I've managed developers for years, thank you very much.
You're right about that being one of the challenges, but it's still an easy challenge compared to everything else.
(BTW, the biggest issue within the emotions category is that developers tend to deny, even to themselves, that an issue is an emotional rather than a rational one.)
