Every time (~5/month) I hear the "managers are idiots" rant I start to wonder, how is it possible that all the smart people: 1. aren't managers. 2. aren't able to convince the "idiots".Look, for an analogy, at the theological incompetence seen in many cases of religious colonization ca. 1500-1914. The good priests stayed in the mainland. A lot of idiots were sent to the outposts.
What you have in colonization is the worst people of one society being put over the best of another. That's true even now. Who are the Americans and British who flock to Dubai? People not smart enough to get executive-level positions in their own countries, who want the upper-class lifestyle (that comes from living in a slave state as not-a-slave) but can't get it on their own steam in their own land.
In Managerland/MBAistan, the good ones end up in $5 million per year private equity jobs or running divisions in investment banks. The bad ones get stuck managing nerds (us) and they get really resentful as time goes on. A 40-year-old top-notch programmer is a badass. A 40-year-old Partner at Sequoia is also a badass. A 40-year-old who manages a team of 5 programmers on some project defined by an executive two levels above him (i.e. he has no creative control either) is probably a bitter, terminal middle manager.
The thing is that the best technologists don't want to be managers. They want to be great at their jobs. They don't climb the ranks at all. Managers, on the other hand, always want to climb, and the capable ones do. Top technologists end up answering to people in Managerland who never got out of middle-management and are bitter/resentful.
If we answered to the $5 million per year top-notch businessmen who can actually sell and motivate people, maybe we'd like our jobs better. Or maybe they'd be even bigger assholes; who knows. I think the Colonization Effect (technologists being the colonized people, Managerland being the father country) is worth looking into, though. It might explain why technology management is so terrible. We end up answering to the ones who failed because they don't have any social skills, and who therefore suck at finding a way to motivate us to do the work.
The quality of people who do sales in an investment bank is just much higher-- they can actually convince people to do what they want instead of ordering them around-- than that of the people who manage software engineers in a traditional "tech" company. I've seen both.
To make it even more "funny" I can tell you that "employees are idiots" is a frequent manager's rant too.
The more intelligent managers don't complain that employees are "idiots". It's more that low-level employees don't care enough. They don't have any authority or autonomy so they're not conscientious. The mismatch comes from the fact that the manager obviously believes the beauty contest is worth playing (he played it and won) while his underlings are often disengaged outright.