Why Engineers Hate Their Managers (and What to Do About It)

There are companies where the entire upper echelon is like that. Full of career people that is only looking up to get a promotion and ignoring their responsibilities toward their teams.

One of the symptoms of this disease is that there is a total disconnect between leadership and the average employee. As everybody is looking up there is no connection or communication down.

And it is very difficult to fix. People at the top have that mindset. So, their expectation is that people below them will be tending all their desires and laughing their jokes. They do not understand promotions as a reward for performance but as a reward for personal loyalty.

The bigger the corporation, the easier this occurs. Small companies die when this happens, big monopolistic corporations get so much money that they can afford to sustain such an inefficient way of working. For big enough corporations it looks like "nobility" in a feudal system. Backstabbing, office politics, and sectarization dominates the environment.

Is this an American thing? Here in Europe, it seems common. How else can you schedule meetings if you can't see when everybody's free?

This is why, besides maybe a small time window at some startups, management will always on average consist of ruthless looking after number one personality types.

While in a small business their goals migght still by nescessity align with those if the actual company, in a more corporate setting the relation between actual company performance and personal activity is so detached that even those taking into account alignment to a certain degree are handicapped relative to those going 100% self promotion.

The systemic stable equilibrium is therefor a shark tank of rutheless egoists trying to exploit anything and everyone they can to climb over each other and pull each other down.

Heh, I'm a worse manager. I keep trying to impress the people I manage. Working on the mama bear part though.

That's frustrating that you've only had one manager whose calendar was viewable by their team. That's the norm all up the chain of the current place I work. I think it was like that previously too.

I like that your manager had _you_ make the meetings for them after sending all the materials to prep for it. I get the feeling that several times that resulted in solving the problems asynchronously instead of actually having the meeting.

The dean of their department, and other administrative staff who don't have any clue what they do. Trust me that the clueless sociopathic administrative layer can absolutely interfere with professors' lives. Tenure can protect them somewhat, though.

> Architects don't have managers.

Yes they do. I don't know why you think this.

> Lawyers don't have managers.

They do unless they're partner, which is probably a small percentage of lawyers. A lot of lawyers are in the legal department of a larger company, with managers.

> Doctors don't have managers.

I know less about this but I'll bet there are plenty of hospital administrative staff above them who are sociopaths and get in their way.

> Software development is the only high-skilled work where people have managers.

All forms of engineers have managers: aerospace, civil, environmental, mechanical, etc. Only if they're running their own consultancy do they not, but you could say the same thing about plumbers and electricians. I'd actually wager a higher percentage of architects and engineers have managers than do tradespeople. Whether you have a manager has less to do with your profession, and more to do with whether you run your own business or not. Some professions run their own businesses more often than others, but I don't think engineers and architects are at the top.

Management is not a product of university MBA programs and power-hungry corporate animals seeking to impose their will on others; it is an inevitably of group labour.

Is that so? Here is an open position: https://www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/explore-roles/management/ro...

> Lawyers don't have managers.

Hmm, we seem to have very different information: https://timeanalyticssoftware.com/what-is-a-law-firm-managin...

> Professors don't have managers

I wonder what do the Dean and Chair at my university do then.

> Architects don't have managers

They do. See https://www.bls.gov/ooh/management/architectural-and-enginee...

> Bankers don't have managers

They do. See this open position: https://nationalcareers.service.gov.uk/job-profiles/bank-man...

> Engineers should not have managers.

I think nobody should have managers, but your examples were so confidently wrong that it's hard to agree with your whole statement. I am on the opinion that any work, no matter whether "high-skilled" or not, doesn't need managers, unless that's just an euphemism for more senior employees that also do the work.

I also think some of the most variable managers you get are at the smallest companies. Like one company had a CTO who was 25 with no prior professional experience that I know of other than co-founding this company. He wasn't bad, bad but certainly not doing half of what he could at that level.

However I've also had experiences where the manager changed 2/3 times in 2-years at a larger company, which IMO is a bad experience.

Are they there to be communication and documentation experts, or are they there to turn requirements into something that works?

I agree that there is benefits in having engineers who can engage with their managers, advocate for required changes and influence the management to act in a more beneficial way, but at some point the person doing this stops being an engineer and starts being a manager themself.

Managers are there to manage, that is organise, coordinate and ensure that their staff are completing tasks in the most efficient way possible. That will at time require them to communicate with both their superiors and their engineer staff. That requires them to be the the communication and documentation expert, not the engineer.

Worse, those that are good at talking are going to waste everyone else’s time.

I said half because that seems to align with the marketing budget vs engineering budget, so it might be the best spot for companies as a whole.

Whether engineers do or don't do documentation and how much of it is decided by management.

Second, unless you are specific, I will assume the "improve their communication skills" is purely stereotype based. They are engineers, therefore they do not have communication skills. And we are going to pretend so even though they just communicated what they need very very clearly and politely.