Is that guy from a management school or did he switch to the dark side during his engineering career? If latter, why?

IMHO, a not-so-bad manager is a guy that relieves you from political/hierarchical/administrative hassles in order to let you get the job done (design-wise and implementation-wise). He should also arbitrate in case of conflict with your peers and defend you in front of other managers (e.g., schedules of your dependencies, conflicts with their minions, etc.) I would ask questions about how he would handle such situations (or possibly have already handled BTW).