I've been on the other side of this...a manager who's definitely interested in helping both his direct reports and even others who didn't report to me develop t

I've been on the other side of this...a manager who's definitely interested in helping both his direct reports and even others who didn't report to me develop their careers. I always did my level best to be honest with people and follow up on things I thought would help, but the reality was that I reported up as well and I didn't have full discretion over projects and usually couldn't come through with whatever "plans" came out of career advice talks. Worse yet, I often had to choose between my direct reports in terms of who to help. That was really hard and I tried to help those that had helped themselves most because I felt that those people wouldn't stall their careers once I was no longer their manager. There are definitely managers out there who lie to their directs and don't care, but there's a lot of us that do care and simply don't have the weight to throw behind giving you what you need. All I can ask is that you try to be understanding of our situation and give us the benefit of the doubt before condemning us.