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> HR has a saying "employees don't leave jobs, they leave managers".

I'd say they leave people. The people aren't necessarily managers.

well, the thinking there is, managers manage people, so ultimately it is their failure to manage people that causes good performers to leave.

I mean, that thinking is obviously wrong. Not everything is within your manager's power to fix. And people have different tolerances with how many headaches they put up with too. The manager might need much more time to improve things than their employee might tolerate.

Those are good points, but at the end of the day, people issues are management issues. It may not be your specific manager that is responsible but the management of the company and HR, who are responsible for the work environment that is set. I'd imagine it is a business (think money) decision on how much time and effort is put into cultivating a reasonably tolerable work environment. if employees have unreasonable demands for their work environment, I agree, it is the employee's fault. But fault aside, even for unreasonable and overly sensitive employees, they're still leaving managers who can't or won't fix people issues in their teams, more often than not, with many many exceptions of course.

If by "people leave managers" they mean anyone in the chain up to and including the CEO, then I guess? That's hardly a meaningful statement though, it's practically a tautology... the CEO is ultimately responsible for everything the company does, so whatever reason you have for leaving is their responsibility... by definition. I can't say I find a tautology like that to be a particularly insightful observation, but maybe I'm missing something.

Yeah, the "managers" in the term "people leave managers" refers to their immediate manager in my experience, and often their immediate manager doesn't make the call on a lot of stuff.

Let me put it differently and talk about immediate managers only. If the people problem is coming from other teams, the immediate manager should "shield" their team members from that. If it is between their team members, then they need to somehow manage the person reporting to them. They can't always, and I personally find that understandable. But still, the "people leave managers" expression is implying that either that manager is not capable or they are not being given enough resources, authority or training to manage people in their team and outside their team.

From the CEO down to line managers, management is responsible for setting the tone and culture. Jeff Bezos and Tim Cook alike are responsible for how horrible and toxic of a work environment exists at amazon and apple. If the company is great, employees can usually switch teams when they don't like a manager.

>It's traumatic, kind of like going through a break-up. You work with the same people for years and then suddenly you will never see them again. That isn't pleasant.

That depends on your co-workers. It may be more like getting a divorce from an abusive spouse.

Either way, unpleasant.

How so? Getting out of a bad marriage isn't unpleasant at all. A bit traumatic perhaps, but that's like going through the trauma of major surgery so you can have your badly broken leg bolted together so you don't have to get an amputation or die of infection. The feeling of freedom and peace you get after getting out is worth the trauma of divorce.

Same goes for getting out of a shitty job with bad coworkers or a bad boss.

Sure, there is relief and a feeling this was necessary and for the best - but also broken dreams, failing social expectations, broken friendships. I guess I mostly agree with you, but I think such traumas make for unpleasant experiences...

Sure, I agree with all that, but also I think it's simply part of life for many people. Not everyone has everything go well for them in life, and people frequently make bad decisions (I'll freely admit to that myself). What's important is how you handle things afterwards. For another example, look at someone who's a really bad drug addict, but then cleans himself up and turns his life around. Sure, it sucks that he had to go through that bad phase in his life and suffer many years (which could possibly be blamed on himself, though addiction is also a biological failing). But we generally like to celebrate these turn-around stories where someone takes a bad life situation and makes it much better. The ex-drug addict will probably always be scarred from his experiences, and always need to be very careful not to get into that trap again, but usually people are happy for him despite all that.

Consider the following: we don’t train LLM to optimize for a decision made on local context. That would cover a minimum viable manager-bot.

We train on (admittedly flawed) context and offer decisions. Much closer to an executive advice bot.

If given two checkpoints: your competitions manager bot, or your competitions executive advice bot, the latter is much more valuable.

If you train the LLM on today's practice, guess what, they will act exactly like today's managers, bias and faults inclusive.

Still traumatic with remote?

When leaving jobs? For me it's even more traumatic. In-person working tends to come with a lot more drama, so leaving can be a relief in part. Remote working, at least for someone of my personality and slight obsession with technical matters, I could get more attached to like minded co-workers; with WFH I encounter minimal drama. But on this topic, pay is much less of an issue as well for WFH. I think I would put up with a lot more of undesirable work conditions remotely than in-person.

Yes. You bond with people when you communicate a lot with them, regardless of the medium.

You think unprofessional workplace interactions, lack of growth (personal or/and company), and micromanagement aren't bad because it happens to you while you're at home?