Yes I think it's a huge benefit to have managers who really understand software from personal experience. I have been in teams with non-technical management, and my experience is that so much time is wasted on irrelevant details. Often managers will ask the wrong questions, and do things the hard way because they're unaware of how the requirements could be modified a little bit to make the whole system work a lot better, and a lot easier.

The responses are telling of how controversial it is, as if people are trying to make excuses for why an EM should not be able to write code and how that's OK. It's not.

I suspect there's also great deal of "If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?"-effect going on. Would you consider a secretary who coordinates a engineering team and handles communication between them and the rest of the company, but doesn't make any technical decisions to be a "engineering manager"?