You are right that that is the ideal manager, but managers are flawed human beings like the rest of us. What’s more, a managers view of the company’s business g

You are right that that is the ideal manager, but managers are flawed human beings like the rest of us. What’s more, a managers view of the company’s business goals and an individual contributors view of business goals aren’t always the same (great managers succeed in making them so, but see the flawed human comment.) An example of why investing understanding your managers world can pay off- a few years ago my team needed some servers for a reason I don’t recall. Our manager had said no because she (legitimately) didn’t have the budget. I knew there was a huge push to people in her role to utilize our cloud environment, so I reframed our request to get access to that.* She put in the request, we got our virtual servers, she got to check a box on her review, and everyone was happy. Point being, while you can’t always have a amazing manager, you can still have a great relationship with an adequate manager that gets you close to what you’d have in the best circumstances. You just have to work at it more (although if your manager can’t do organizational politics you might be in for some hurt regardless.) And there are some truly awful managers out there who you just leave. * Ok, it wasn’t just me who worked winning her over, but the story got weird writing in the plural.