I had cautiously gotten into management because I wanted to learn the skills of delegatin and really building through others and growing/coaching others. I thoroughly enjoyed this. But over time what I had realized was the role had been changing (not sure if it was just for pandering) towards being a mouth piece for leadership and hr - having to relay decisions I didn't believe in (perf seasons, promo rationales, layoffs anybody?) As if they were on purely my own. Given Ive always enjoyed building this may actually be a good forcing function to go back to IC and just ... Build!
I've recently held a senior management position then left and obtained a technical position at a different organisation.
Not kidding, I nearly cried with happiness moving away from SM and into a tech position again. I was GIVEN work to do. I had NO responsibilities for others. Moreover, I was DISCOURAGED from attending unnecessary meetings. I arranged no meetings! Not one!
Went from 7 direct reports to zero. No more approving holiday requests. No more performance reviews. No more management town-halls. No more arguing strategy with anyone. It was brilliant. 'Please write a procedure that does X. Return it by Thursday.' 'Please optimise this statement that hangs during the overnight run'. Yes, absolutely, more of that please.
I too went from management back to coding (freelance) since the start of the pandemic and I also love it. Today I happened to notice that Google Calendar was reporting an anomalous week in terms of meetings: I had 2.5 hours of meetings in my calendar this week, while my average right now is 1.2.
I average less than an hour and a half of meetings per week! I have so much more time in my life for the things I love, it’s crazy.
It because a theory of mine that a large part of my job function was to simultaneously water down accountability from above, while adding enough complexity to the layers below me to discourage them from changing the status quo.
The double edged sword being, without that authority, that same power structure is forced on me, and now I’m more aware of it.
I have a feeling being in middle management leads to that squeeze.
If you're closer to the doing, you are more isolated from the companyspeak nonsense. If you are in the upper part of the food chain, you get to enjoy more influence, freedom, a better risk/reward tradeoff, with costs you mention.
In the middle you're kind of screwed from both ends.
I had a couple of accidental ah-ha moments about this. Before I got into management all managers (fully up the stack) seemed like pointy hairs bosses. But what is easy to miss in Dilbert is that the PHB is really part of exec suite and rarely your front line manager. A hated front line manager might be usually incompetent or just inexperienced than evil!
The other thing was demonization of front line managers. There was always a terrible (there are definitely terrible traits) managers but never terrible "leaders". Even worse was you'd see articles by hr "influencers" expounding this. Where are the same hr loud speakers now that "leadership" is the one inflicting these layoffs and ridiculous policies?
The best thing you can do in these roles is protect your team. It's your primary job to ensure they can build and with minimal wasted efforts. If you view it as building for the company, your team is a victim to all the dysfunctions of the organization and nobody wants to be on that team. The mouthpiece part is tricky, I always try to give the official message with a dose of my personal candid opinion on it even if it's in opposition. You just can't lay it on too thick and try to find a way to spin it to a positive as to not be demotivating for the team, "it might be challenging, but at least we'll learn X and they're aware of the risks that are at top of your minds."
Agree. Their decision is made. The way I manage I tell upper management what risks their decisions have, then don’t let them blame my team for when those eventualities occur. My teams don’t work overtime to meet a deadline when some decisions was made that screwed up the schedule. Those kinds of things. That’s protecting your team.
> towards being a mouth piece for leadership and hr - having to relay decisions I didn't believe in (perf seasons, promo rationales, layoffs anybody?) As if they were on purely my own.
The role doesn't change though. It has been like that forever.
This is another part of Management (whether you like it or not). Management should be seen as a cohesive "Leadership" unit because if the leaders aren't on the same page, what good are them?
The other thing about Management/Leadership is that they should be able to relay the message in the right format and at the right level for their direct reports. C-level typically have OKR/Objective in 3-5 bullet points (the bigger the company, the more bullet points) and it's the VP and Dir jobs to break these individual points to high-level goals for their Organizations. It is the Manager's job to distill it even further to their level + their direct reports.
It's one way to keep ICs on the same frequency with leadership and to execute for a common goal.
Most ICs don't want to attend meetings, don't want to hear "high-level goals", and more importantly, don't have the skill to consume those high-level goals at their level. They need help from various layers of leaderships. Sure, there are those exceptional ICs that wouldn't mind to be involved at that level and understood the social/human aspect part of the work but let's be frank here: majority of ICs just want to bang keyboard, produce clean code, and marvel at the end results (ignoring everything in between).
Imagine this from a military perspective. The general/field marshal etc makes the call that you're going over the top and as a smart Major or whatever you know this means most of your men are going to die. Are you going to say to your men:
"Hello gents, we have our new orders, we're going to go over the top tomorrow at 8am and try and take the village one mile down the road, however, I think this is a horrible idea and you're all probably going to die."
Even if you really believe this is the case, it's a bad idea to tell your men as it means the plan (which is going to happen anyway) is even LESS likely to succeed. That is, if you can make your men believe the plan is genius and they're going to destroy the enemy easily, it may give them more confidence and leave more of them alive at the end of it.
By explaining your reasoning in every situation you can will build trust, so that on the rare occasion that you need them to act without sharing, they will trust you enough to do so. For example, when in an execution environment where response time matters.
And in practice, this is how good commanders I've worked with have operated. And this is explicitly a principle of the US Army, by understanding the objective and it's purpose units are able to continue acting to fulfill their objectives even if they are cut off.
The upside of explaining whenever you can let them build a mental model to know how you would likely handle an unexpected situation, allowing them to act in your absence.
It is unusual to have a team emotionally mature enough to handle actual transparency. You only have to read HN to know people live with extreme cognitive dissonance between wanting their high salaries and hating the business practices that enable them.
My experience has always been that certain employees get marked as "adults in the room" and are given real transparency in 1:1s.
This is true. Especially extending it to opinions and emotions.
But understanding the purpose and why of a decision/plan is only a small piece of full transparency. And is always achievable. This is the minimal amount I consider functional. Less than this is dysfunctional.
The reset is extremely rare for teams (I’ve only had this on a team once and it was magical), but happens regularly individually 1-1.
In general, if you want your reports to accept company decisions, it is in your interest as a manager to align your stated opinions with company policy. Openly disagreeing, or just trying to take a neutral position will only reduce faith in the company and sow unrest for which you will be held accountable.
Isn’t that the entire purpose of being a manager? If I were just going to repeat the company line and not advocate for my team then I might as well be a rock.
"I don't like it either. Here's what I'm doing to try to get them to change course. In the meantime, we need to do xyz, and I need you to do abc as part of that"
I have absolubtely had managers that did an excellent job of making us feel like we were in it together. In fact I'd say its one of the key skills of being a manager at all?
> Is this actually the expectation at the places you work?
Can you imagine a manager saying, "I don't agree with these decisions, but you need to do A, B, C." This might be being frank and open with your reports, but at the same time you reduce their motivation. And if top management learns about this, they won't be happy.
So yes, there is such unspoken pressure to at least not to distance oneself from the things you ask others to do, whether they come from you or from your boss.
I’ve been a manager for decades and this is the way to handle it sometimes. Life is full of things that suck but you have to do them anyway, like paying taxes or cleaning your bathroom. Why should we try to pretend that work, of all places, is exempt from that?
Wrapping it in pink wrapping paper fools no one but kills personal credibility, which is the most important asset a manager has.
Top management often does not give a shit if people are happy about the thing (who is happy about layoffs?), just that it gets done satisfactorily. So yeah, sometimes I tell my team “this sucks but just get it done and then we can get back to the interesting work.”
> Can you imagine a manager saying, "I don't agree with these decisions, but you need to do A, B, C."
Some of my best managers, on well-regarded teams, have done exactly that. Those managers are doing me a favour by flagging that it's a waste of my time, emotional energy, and political capital to argue with decisions that neither they nor I can affect, and that it will be better if we just get on with it.
This is how I operate when I have a close trust with my team and boss. But I have also been in very transactional environments where I was "ratted out" for my frankness!
Yes, it happens all the time. Each time we get a new form we have to fill out to do something or some extra hoop to jump through. If the manager I worked for didn’t act like a normal person that thought that shit was stupid I would absolutely hate working with/for that liar/crazy person.
I'm not a manager, but at the very least it seems like an implicit expectation associated with the role. I wouldn't be surprised if it was explicit at some companies.
Depending on the company saying I don't believe X gets relayed back up your chain with eventual unpleasant consequences (hey so and so doesn't agree with this management decision so they must be a misfit and can't be trusted to put the company first)
Absolutely. There is no disrespect anywhere here. I don't need to agree to do my job well. Just that I don't feel safe enough to be vocal about sharing my thoughts -)
