Seriously, what the hell is this mindset? What’s the deal with HN and framing middle management as some us-vs-them bad guy? Stop dehumanizing this layer. Middle management doesn’t exist by their own accord. It’s formed by leadership to support leadership.
I get the impression that the people who bash middle management have never experienced the role themselves.
Executives and upper management? Yeah, they're likely the ones rubbing their hands in glee. You can hear it in interviews with several of them. "These people not wanting to come back to the office or 'quiet quitting' or jumping ship to get paid what they're worth are going to regret doing so when this recession hits." Inside their heads they're probably adding a 'Muahahaha' at the end of that.
But I think most middle managers are about as worried about their jobs as ICs are.
But overall trends in the workforce, at your company, and policies/practice that create these trends? That's upper level executive level leadership. Why do middle managers get all the blame for company decisions? I have never understood that.
They are either professional managers who have only managed but never did anything else, or they are mediocre software engineers who have decided to become managers … because in most cases they couldn’t build and deliver anything.
Unfortunately leaderships let bozos rules, that’s the truth.
“ We went out and hired a bunch of professional management; it didn’t work at all. Most of them were Bozos. They knew how to manage, but they didn’t know how to DO anything.
If you are a great person, why do you want to work for somebody you cannot learn anything from? And you know what’s interesting - you know what the best managers are? They are the great individual contributors who never ever wanted to be a manager, but decide they have to be a manager because no one else is able to do as good job as them.”
I'll humbly submit that we should offer more grace to middle managers: these typically end up as the first few steps into management for ICs. The role is new, and they face difficulties managing up to upper management and clients, and down to their subordinates. In some orgs, I suspect they are not set up to succeed, but more to diffuse responsibility and hopefully compartmentalize some of the chaos.
That said, I've had a handful of [middle] managers who weren't fun to work under, and it was their personalities/vices combining with various organizational pathologies.
> We went out and hired a bunch of professional management; it didn’t work at all...they knew how to manage, but they didn’t know how to DO anything.
Leadership is instantiated within a business/cultural context. Without knowledge of that context, leaders will not be as effective as they could be. This makes the concept of a professional managerial class that purports to be able to swoop into any industry and "manage" rather ridiculous.
What's the alternative? The truly great contributors don't want to be managers; they want to do real work. You can't be a manager and also do real work; there's not enough time. I've seen good managers actively quit their role because they wanted to do interesting work, not manage.
>And you know what’s interesting - you know what the best managers are? They are the great individual contributors who never ever wanted to be a manager, but decide they have to be a manager because no one else is able to do as good job as them.”
And then they can't do any interesting work, because their days are full of meetings. They eventually get tired of this and switch roles (or companies if they have to) and return to IC roles.
Someone has to be the manager; you can't have a company with thousands of engineers and a handful of executives managing them. Asking great ICs to do as you suggest isn't scalable or sustainable.
That's mostly not true, with occasional exceptions. The skillset to be a great manager is completely different from a great engineer, so having someone excel at both is very rare.
A great manager needs (1) very good people skills to truly understand what makes each individual optimally happy and productive, and (2) the political skills to manouver within the organization in ways that allows them to make (1) happen.