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Ask HN: What do middle-level managers do?

• IloveHN84 7y ago
  Holidays or home office
• DanBC 7y ago
  When you talk to very senior leadership they'll talk about the difference between "strategic" and "operational". Directors set strategy. Senior managers try to implement that.
  • vagab0nd 7y ago
    Sure. I've heard that a lot. But that's very abstract. What actual work is involved in "setting a strategy"? And why does it seem less visible compared to other work?
    • vmurthy 7y ago
      Work includes but not limited to : - Competitive analysis ( what’s happening in the market today) - scenario planning ( what happens if Google gets onto our turf) - Operational readiness ( how do we get to where we want to be ). Will add more a bit later.
    • btown 7y ago
      I like to think of it like this: one layer prioritizes which products, another layer prioritizes which users, another layer prioritizes which features, another layer chooses architecture that supports all features, another runs sprints. Consider allocating resources to an email client vs. a web browser, then figuring out how much to focus on enterprise vs. small business vs. consumer, then figuring out user stories. All require different analyses - a PM who should be asking specific customers for feedback would be ineffective if they also needed to agonize about the financial consequences (market size, biz dev team readiness to sell into that market, CoCA) of choosing those customers. And even the latter decisionmaker may be better able to focus by having a departmental budget, and letting the C Suite decide if browser dominance is something that maximizes shareholder value. As a developer these things should seem self-obvious because ideally they were anticipated a year prior, headcount was allocated, and you were recruited at the right time. It’s rarely perfect, of course. But it doesn’t have to be - people don’t need to row in sync down to the millisecond, but without a coxswain there’s no hope.
      • dTal 7y ago
        I like the coxswain analogy because it raises the question of why the coxswain is typically paid orders of magnitude more than the rowers.
        • btown 7y ago
          I did a bit of research out of curiosity, and these quotes from coxswains at https://www.sfgate.com/sports/ostler/article/Steering-toward-gold-is-a-coxswain-s-fine-art-3684648.php https://www.sfgate.com/sports/ostler/article/Steering-toward... stuck with me: "My (two) guys were very mechanical. Every 30 seconds, they wanted the stroke rate and the position of the boats that were even with us or ahead of us. Guys really need to know where they are... We control the psychology of the athletes in the race ... You try to wring every last bit of power out of those athletes. If you do that, you can lose a race and eventually come to terms with that." Any manager out there, at any level, would nod and approve.
    • slgeorge 7y ago
      Anything that isn't within a couple of levels of your own role is basically 'less visible'. That's sort of the point, it's about abstracting - divison of labour etc. So you can't really see the work that someone two levels above you is doing. Likewise for the same reason people higher in the org struggle to get information on people a few levels down are doing. The basic answer is that operational roles are focused on the current phase of work. Middle level roles are focused on co-ordination. Higher level roles are focused on future phases of work (and managing external stakeholders). For many of the senior roles the reasons the work is less visible is because it's either in situations employees aren't, or considered confidential. For example, CEO meeting with investors is a big chunk of work, but it's not that visible to employees. For an example of the second, I'd say 'organisational design' and areas of investment are often confidential as they have implications for hiring/firing.
    • roenxi 7y ago
      A 'strategy' is a high-level coordination on what types of trade-offs get made. Strategy is also remarkably delicate - if you have an organisation with 100 different people, there are somewhere like 100 different opinions on what the best trade-offs to make are. Imagine the chaos; and if you can then containing that chaos is what middle managers do. Middle management is a fairly involved process of finding people who are doing things that aren't according to strategy and stopping them. Most of middle managements time is monitoring that everyone is doing what they said they would do, and motivating people to do what the business needs - by hook or crook. A good manager will make the supervisors uncomfortable at the right moment on the right subject. The supervisors will then get things done that the strategy requires in conjunction with their team. It is remarkable how quickly people will start working against each other without management. I worked on a mine site where the miners sometimes tried to dig out the access to the mine; and while that was extreme people working at cross purposes to each other is common. Someone in any large company always wants the equivalent of rewriting the software from scratch; they need to be found and stopped.
    • wolco 7y ago
      Take a typical org. The board meets and talks and decides everyone is going mobile and that becomes a goal. The senior level managers (ceo/coo/vp of departments) come up with a general strategy around mobile for their departments. Marketing VP might decide to change CRMs . They come up with a plan that involves getting a budget approved for the assessment phase (meeting with vendors, sme, etc). Based on that they put a presentation together to get support/budget for the next phase. During this time they might try to see synergies with other approved projects with budgets and try to fit in the CRM changes within them. If approved they move to the implementation phase where the work goes to the development manager and/or vendor management. A pm gets assigned the project. They meet with the vp and keep them updated. When the project is finished reports are written and sent back to the VP. The VP makes year end presentation on what they did to achieve the goal. They would report things like mobile engagement up 10% after CRM upgrade. CEO would report to board 80% of customer facing sites are now mobile friendly. Next year we plan to do 100%.
• pacifiedcitizen 7y ago
  The Peter Principle applies here for any large-scale company that has been running for a good amount of time: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle
• codefreakxff 7y ago
  Was Director of IT. My manager would be considered Middle Management. She had a half dozen directors reporting her and would meet with them to get updates and set goals for each department every week. She would pour over all the financials and accounting to make sure things were on track. She would take the results of meetings back to Upper Management and tell them everything was fine. Upper Management would then go play golf and figure out some new way of expanding our lines of business, or meet with random groups of staff to make their presence known, put on a friendly face. No idea what else Upper Management did with the rest of their day
  • shostack 7y ago
    What's funny is that the further removed up the totem pole a role is, the more people assume they do less and less. Sure in some cases that might be how it goes, but it would be worth spending some time exploring how things work at the top. For example, what appears to be a useless golf game may be relationship building for a future major partnership.
• drewmassey 7y ago
  Why don’t you just ask them? Not in a confrontational way, but like “hey what are you up to this week?” I’ve worked in orgs from 10-30,000 people and have always been able to at least get 5-15 minutes with this level of management.
  • zug_zug 7y ago
    Right, but maybe even go a step further, and be like "Hey Josh how you doing? Busy day?" They'll likely elaborate, and if they don't want to then it means your question is overbearing in their eyes.
• jerkstate 7y ago
  Working with other middle managers to align resources for upcoming projects according to company goals. For example, if you know you need to implement a foobar next quarter that will require another team to implement a bazblee that you depend on, they can work with the bazblee senior manager to make sure the bazblee gets done, instead of the plumbus being requested by another group (that is, if the foobar and bazblee are more important to the company's goals than the plumbus - otherwise, they'll do the plumbus and you won't get your bazblee - so you probably shouldn't work on your foobar project) Convincing other managers of your project's alignment with company goals is usually not an exact science, so your middle manager's ability to get these things committed to and done can be highly variable, depending on their connections with other middle managers and their ability to influence. You can tell if you have a good middle manager if things you need from the rest of the company tend to fall into place, versus constantly being disappointed when you ask for stuff from other groups in the company. Of course this all requires skillful ICs and team managers to manage up and make sure the middle managers know what they are doing and what they will need from the rest of the company.
  • spork12 7y ago
    The plumbus is a true multi-purpose tool though. It should always come 1st.
  • closeparen 7y ago
    Interesting. We design a project inside the quarter where we committed to build it, middle managers could not possibly be fighting for dependencies during the planning cycle because engineers haven’t looked yet to see what they are. I’ve long suspected we should be writing design docs and putting them on the shelf one or more quarters before committing to execute on them, but what do I know.
    • ralmeida 7y ago
      At middle-management levels, dependencies are probably more abstract than system-level dependencies. Imagine your product has no mobile app yet, but one is in the roadmap for next year. Then someone in marketing is in talks with Apple about a chance to do a demo in a keynote or something. This would bump up the priority for the mobile app for this year, but other features previously in the roadmap have to be moved around. So there’s a level of managers which will go around negotiating the options.
• rb808 7y ago
  You should try to get in to some meetings where these guys are. Its good to be known by these people, you shouldn't be scared of them, esp if you're working hard for them. Things they do: Talk to execs to find out what direction of the company has been decided Choose strategy, approve strategic technology choices, plan for the future Making sure first line managers & their teams are doing what they're supposed to Allocate money to projects, decide which ones need resources, which ones can be cut Make a budget, decide how much money to ask for next qtr/year Hiring policies, hiring managers, plans for hiring staff Make sure division is following company policy, implement internal controls, auditing is happy. Keeping in touch with other divisions and regions to swap ideas and work together. Firefighting problems that come up with people leaving, systems not working properly, projects running late.
• icedchai 7y ago
  They probably spend most of their days sending emails, you just don't see them.
• wgjordan 7y ago
  Gee, I don't have a direct answer for you on that question; but tell ya what, I'll run it up the chain and circle back to you on it in a few weeks!
• epc 7y ago
  Really depends on the organization. Middle managers manage managers. They are definitely in meetings, just meetings you're unaware of. My experience dates to IBM in the 1990s so is lacking whatever has developed since then. At IBM first and second line managers still had some understanding of the code or product or services being developed/run by their organizations (and I knew first lines who were still active contributors). Once you got to third line, those managers are more focused, almost solely focused on "business" issues and macro operational issues. As you get higher up an organization, the managers could care less about the day to day or even month to month issues faced by their organization. They're focused on will their organization meet or exceed revenue projections? Are you running below or over budget? You've maxed out space in Blue Cube corners and at the rate of growth only need 10,000 square feet next year but they can only rent new space in units of 100,000 square feet. The CEO is demanding 5% cuts across the board, can you do it without firing people? Or is there a particular organization you've been hoping to get rid of anyway that you can terminate en masse? Even higher up at director and VP level they're focused on profit & loss, because that's what they get measured on, maybe secondarily customer satisfaction. Employee satisfaction is mostly irrelevant once you're above a second line organization. Depending on the _jurisdiction_ a manager is in, they may have certain legal responsibilities or authorities that a lower level manager may not have. Even if you're not the CEO, you might have to sign off on certain contracts (especially with governments, governments love to have an executive's signature on things, because they can go after that executive when the $100MM payroll system costs $300MM and still doesn't work).
  • shubb 7y ago
    Thats interesting, it feels like that upper level you mention are more like individual contributors, except optimising very slow responding systems indirectly through policies.
    • ci5er 7y ago
      I like that - I think that's about right. Working on the business as a machine, not only to drive the machine (the CEO and his staff), but to optimize the internal architecture of, and to optimize its various inner workings and component-to-component linkages, is a thing. But - it's a machine made out of people. Whom are inherently squishy emotional things to build a well-oiled machine out of...
• wjossey 7y ago
  > I’m just too scared to talk to them. No reason to be! They’re just another human being trying to do their best for your company and team. Assume best intentions! If you’re nervous because you have no idea what to say to broach the topic, here’s something you could try. “Hi, I’m Charlie. I work for Susan over on the infrastructure team. As part of my own professional development, I’m trying to build out an understanding of how all of the people at our company move towards our common goal, as it’s not always obvious to me at my level. Do you have time for a quick one on one where you can share with me your roles and responsibilities, and what some of your challenges are here at our company?” Basically, you don’t need to say something as blunt as “What exactly is it that you do here?” Instead, just come at it from a position of positive inquiry where you’re just genuinely trying to learn and grow. I say all this because no answer here is going to really tell you what that person does. Everyone’s roles and responsibilities vary, regardless of their title. You won’t learn unless you learn how to ask!
  • solarkraft 7y ago
    At my company I feel pretty comfortable just asking "Yo, what's your job?". Why not? Would you be offended by someone else's curiosity?
    • wjossey 7y ago
      > Would you be offended by someone else's curiosity? Me personally? No. Do I know others who would be? Yes. Always a tricky line trying to be thoughtful about how someone might react to a particular question, especially when you're just genuinely trying to learn something about them. But, given this person is likely a relatively unknown party, not having any trust built up means that there can be misunderstandings even from simple questions like, "Yo, what's your job?" That being said, if your company culture is such that everyone you hire responds well to that style of question, great! Certainly no problem on my end with that type of questioning. I merely was being a bit more elaborate in my earlier response to account for someone not necessarily taking something that brief, well.
      • swagasaurus-rex 7y ago
• xkcd-sucks 7y ago
  They provide a human (inter)face to a group of people, and allow people to talk about/attribute behavior to an organizational unit as if it were a person. The most useful thing they(we) do is deal with bullshit drama on your behalf, like Kelly isn't giving you the thing your boss asked you to get from her last week because Ellen told Kelly to do something different because John is an asshole, and documenting everything to cover asses appropriately. Seriously I just relay information between people and assess whether they've actually received that information correctly.
  • ilaksh 7y ago
    Thank you for being honest. Couldn't that purpose be served by hiring people who know how to communicate and are not political, and using technology for group communication and planning?
• sudhirj 7y ago
  The analogy I like using that of a carriage drawn by a large team of horses. Workers are the horses, and CxOs are the drivers. Management is the harness the keeps all the horses pointed in the same direction and running together. A majority of the physical work is done by the horses, of course, and it looks like the drivers (Top level management) are slacking off - but everything is really on them. "Strategy" is really just where to go and which route to get there. And if they choose wrong or time things badly, everyone else in the organization has done their work correctly, and the failure is purely executive. The workers are great at running (execution), but left to themselves are horrible at self organizing and running in the direction required in tandem, with the correct beat and stride. It doesn't matter how strong or fast the individual horses are, it's much more important that they run together without friction or distraction and support each other. That's where (good) management comes in. They're the blinders that keep the horses from individually pulling in different directions and chasing distractions, and the harnesses that keep the entire team fixed together. The exert pressure on horses to both slow down and speed up, and both are vitally important. Done well, management is critical to making sure that the whole org works smoothly. They also act as a communication bridge between strategy and execution. Strategy is great for the all hands once a week or month, where the execs sing about the promised land, but the weekly plans, budgets, and responsibilities of making sure everyone is fed and has toilet access are all management. Bad managers typically suffer from delusions of being either horses or drivers. They either try to work hard like the horses (bad idea - there's no harness or blinders), or think they're in charge of strategy (they're seen as just slackers, and no harness or blinders again). They don't temper executive vision with their knowledge of reality, nor do they transitively inspire workers.
  • astazangasta 7y ago
    >The workers are great at running (execution), but left to themselves are horrible at self organizing and running in the direction required in tandem This is an ideological claim that is counter to my experience. Workers are fine at self-organizing, they just might organize in ways that management does not agree with because workers and management may have different ideas about what the company needs. In my experience the usual reason that workers have trouble organizing themselves is that they are not given control over resources like hiring and equipment purchases, specifically so that they won't be able to organize without management.
• projectramo 7y ago
  You can only effectively directly manage so many people. So as you hire more people you need more managers but then you get too many managers to directly manage so you need another level. Imagine you had 10,000 people working for you. Just saying hi to them would take up all your time. How many people would you say a person effectively directly manages? Some would say 5, others 15. I think the upper level of estimates might be 30-50. (Yes, someone is going to say 200.) Let’s go with 10 for even numbers. So after you hire 100 people you need a manager for the managers. When you hit 1000 you need another layer. When you hit 10,000 you need yet another layer.
• wearsaredhat 7y ago
  Highly recommend the book “The Leadership Pipeline” written by Ram Charan. The book focuses on developing a pipeline through which leaders within an organization move and describes accountabilities at each level, along with red flags that indicate that a manager at a given level isn’t operating correctly at said level. Very helpful in understanding what happens (or should be happening) at each level. Ram Charan is a well respected author and consultant, who has according to Wikipedia consulted with some of the largest businesses in the US.
  • maxxxxx 7y ago
    These books usually describe a very idealized version of the real world. I think the only way to find out what mid level managers do is to ask them or ideally to shadow them for a few days. I think shadowing other roles would generally be very beneficial in a lot of companies so people understand each other better. I have had a lot of occasions where I basically thought that some role is useless until I worked with them and found out what they have to put up with the whole day.
    • wearsaredhat 7y ago
      Certainly they do. And the book admits as much. In my opinion, it is still a valuable read as it gives a generalized lens through which a large org’s structure, and activities at each layer, can be understood.
• jedberg 7y ago
  Now I wonder which FANG you work at. At the one I worked at (N) you would definitely see the middle managers all the time, and you'd be having skip level meetings with them on a fairly regular basis. Their job is to facilitate coordination. The same thing your manager does, but for other managers. They make sure everyone is working towards useful goals, make sure hiring and budgets are in line, and communicate with their peers to avoid overlapping work and most importantly make sure to communicate context down their teams about why they are doing what they are doing and what the business hopes to accomplish in regards to their specific area (and overall).
• tyingq 7y ago
  I can tell you that "they are never in any meetings" is highly unusual for someone that's a "manager of managers". The places I've been that's pretty much all they do.
• humbledrone 7y ago
  (Note: my replies below assume a sane situation at a FANG company with good management.) #define MM middle manager > But they are never in any meetings Do you mean they are never in any meetings that you are in, or do you mean that you have access to their calendars and can see that they have no meetings at all? I have never seen a MM who's calendar isn't back-to-back meetings all day every day. Their job is basically 100% talking to people, whether that's face-to-face or via email or whatever. Note that depending on how senior they are, their calendar may be made private, since the names of their meetings and who they're meeting with might be sensitive ("Sync about possible layoffs" would be a really bad meeting name to leak). A large number of these meetings are (1) people trying to influence the MM (i.e. get them to approve something) and (2) the MM trying to influence other people (i.e. get a partner team to do something, or get their boss to approve something). > And they don't seem to affect the direction of projects in any way The fact that your team exists and is staffed by N people was an MM's decision at some point. It may have been someone else who had the idea to create your team, but they had to make their case to an MM and convince them that it was worth staffing. Has your team ever grown, i.e. gotten a slot for one more person? If so, an MM made the final decision that it was worth allocating another person. MMs spend as much time managing "up" as "down". An MM's boss is asking them to justify why the company has 100 people working on X. To do this, the MM has to demonstrate that there is an important business problem to sole, and present a convincing strategy to solve it that requires 100 people to execute. If your basic experience on the team doesn't seem to be directly influenced by MMs on a regular basis, that may just indicate that you're in a stable part of the org solving a clear business problem and the MM is satisfied that you are executing. You would see an MM's influence by (big) changes in team priorities, project direction, reorgs of your team, etc.
  • shostack 7y ago
    Fantastic and accurate description of what they do and the problems they solve. Oddly enough, just as there are those who think MMs twiddle their thumbs all day, there are those who work with or are MMs that think executive leadership twiddle their thumbs all day.
• astazangasta 7y ago
  The main function of managers is routing information in the organization; this model was developed in the 1940s. In most large corporations today, there are a handful of C-level officers, the "executives" - their role is to make decisions. The conception of the modern corporation is that these people do NOT need any specialized domain knowledge in order to be effective, they are just generalized "decision-makers", that is, they perform the executive function; what they need is to be fed a reliable stream of information to act upon. However, in any large organization there are usually many thousands of times more workers than there are C-level executives. This produces a huge, two-way problem of information flow - how can the executives know what all of the workers are doing, and how can the workers know what the executives want them to do? The solution is a hierarchical model; this hierarchical model has been used throughout history to organize polities, armies, etc., under the control of a small number of individuals. The basic principle is each unit has a single manager; each set of units has a ur-manager, etc. This allows information to flow from the worker to their manager, from the managers to the mid-level manager, and from the mid-level manager to the executives. Of course, the information remains bandwidth-limited. Each manager can only, practically, assimilate information from a limited number of people. This number probably doesn't change at different levels of hierarchy - the manager can deal with 10 workers before becoming overwhelmed, the mid-level manager can deal with 10 managers before becoming overwhelmed, etc. This means the larger the organization, the more levels of management you need to try to manage the information flow. Roughly, if you have N workers, you'll need log(N) levels of managers. The efficacy of this strategy, however, is limited by a key constraint: the compressibility of information. If 10 workers are giving information to their manager, and that manager is passing all of this information on to the mid-level manager, the mid-level manager is going to be overwhelmed; they cannot process information from 100 workers. It must be reduced; the job of the manager is to winnow down the information from 10 workers, determine what requires intervention from above, and pass this on. In practice this is extremely difficult; the information might NOT be compressible (you need, for example, a two-hour presentation to understand a particular security problem and its implications, not a two-paragraph summary). A friend of mine who works at a high level in an org said her observation is that C-level officers are routinely drowning in information; their answer is simply to ignore the vast majority of email they receive and to punt on their executive function. The same problem exists the other way - a C-level officer cannot possibly make decisions for all of the workers in the hierarchy. They can only give a small amount of information back to their managers; this information does not magically uncompress into a sophisticated plan for workers. In reality, people have to do work to fill in the blanks (i.e., make decisions) at all levels of the hierarchy. The result is that information often gets lost - C-level officers are unaware that their workers feel that the product is broken, that engineering or security problems are overwhelming management goals, that timelines can't be met because there are too many constraints.
• ishan_chhabra 7y ago
  From first principles, as a manager at any level, your output is the collective sum of your team's output. You maximize your effectiveness by finding the right balance of things to do that (a) can contribute directly to the team's output and (b) improve the team's capability to produce. Managerial activities fall into 3 key categories: Strategy, People and Habits. Let's contrast these activities for a Level 1 manager and a Middle manager. Level 1: Strategy - The projects that the team needs to do are defined bottom up and top down, and the Level 1 manager's role is to split it into right chunks, allocate them and make sure they get done. The operational aspects of tracking and ensuring things get done is more important here. People - You have 1:1's with team members to make sure they are at their personal best and are aligned with the company. Habits - You ensure that the team is following the right practices in their day to day that help them be effective. Middle manager: Strategy - You try to make sense of the company (or Business Unit) strategy (both product and Go to market) and then boil it down to the key projects that your teams needs to accomplish. The important aspects here are high level definition, prioritization and allocation. You make sure that you allocate the right projects to the right teams based on their capabilities and past projects and that they are crystal clear on the the 1-2 big things they need to deliver per month/quarter. People - You are heavily involved in hiring and staffing the teams and making sure that your managers are being effective through skip level 1:1s. Habits - You ensure that right habits (also called processes, but I don't like that word) are being followed by teams. eg. Is the weekly planning meeting happening properly, is work getting tracked, are their development practices that helped one team which could help other teams, and so on. I hope that gives you are better picture.
• kabdib 7y ago
  I was more levels from the CEO at Microsoft (up to Ballmer) than I was as a lowly intern working for the US government at NIST (up to . . . well, Reagan at the time). I could see value up to about three levels above me, and maybe a couple at the top, but those three or four middle layers were pretty confusing. We had director-level and partner-level people do flybys of our engineering groups, saying things like "We'll see each other every few weeks, you're doing great stuff!" and then vanish for six months, a year, or forever. They never seemed to do anything that mattered. I work in a flat organization now. Not necessarily better, but there's a whole lot less dead wood, avoidance by delegation, and simple quit-in-place behavior.
  • Bahamut 7y ago
    These middle layers are doing a lot more work than you probably realize. I am a little more privy to some of what they do being a senior IC at a FAANG (6 managers away from my CEO) - sometimes managers take on projects that have to be done but are outside their team's scope. The scale of the project may vary depending on what level they are. My own senior manager was in charge of one such project that ended up affecting the whole company (100k+ employees). They might be in high level discussions with executives about plans on a weekly/monthly/quarterly/yearly basis (potentially all 4 of these levels, like my own is), and doing advance planning before first level managers and senior ICs become involved. These managers often have to have an acute sense of what kind of product may be needed, but good ones will leave the planning of the details to their reports. Their job is to make sure other teams/orgs are aligned and that their team/org delivers on expectations set by all parties. There becomes a point where it becomes impossible to have everyone be aware of all the knowledge and nuance that is going on without it creating immense noise - when this happens, these middle layers become vital. You still ideally want as little of them as possible, but they all should ideally serve very important purposes. I'm very thankful for all the levels of management in my own organization and company at least (experience may vary of course), it is the best management team I have been under at any workplace - other than my direct manager, each level of management up my chain has over 10 years of management experience apiece.
• deanalevitt 7y ago
  When I worked as a director for a large tech company I had some similar questions. Because I joined through an acquisition, I never truly adjusted to the network of managers both above, below and alongside me. Eventually, about a year after leaving to launch a new startup, I read High Output Management. Suddenly everything made sense. I'd strongly recommend reading it. Many Bay Area companies are led by people who read this book, and I think you'll gain an understanding of what the mid-level managers worry about in their day to day.
• ubu7737 7y ago
  Managers of every kind have to deal with personnel, meaning humans, and this is a huge part of what they have to accomplish. They divide their time between humanistic goals and project goals, and it's very squishy. Managers have to devote a certain amount of time to understanding you and your influence on the process and your mental state. Managers have to have influence with other people. They build relationships and they form a big picture about the work being done and the timelines imposed and the human assets they have to motivate to meet the important goals imposed by the business. You've heard all this before but it's a very squishy job. There is no template for it. Management is very, very difficult to do.
• alexandercrohde 7y ago
  Odds are you can simply add their calendar on google calendars and see when they've booked meetings.
• Havoc 7y ago
  A mix of supervising, teaching and inspiring the people in the trenches
• mathattack 7y ago
  Most are processing information and communicating. A CEO may have a goal. It takes and army of middle managers to break that goal into actions for individual contributors, and communicate progress against it. And then they work on process improvements to make the above work better. It’s a mix of analyzing, meeting and communicating.
• Edmond 7y ago
  Bullshit jobs :) These are jobs that are useful sometimes, mostly not. At best you can say they keep an eye on the organization.
• nojvek 7y ago
  They manage managers. Per every ~8 people, you need some sort of a map/reduce operation. That is a manager. An organization is essentially a giant map-reduce hive mind. Some managers are there due to them just cruising slowly up the chain. Management is a really hard problem. There are very very few managers I have met in my entire life that I would work with them again. Some just love the power of ordering people around. Some are just plain assholes. Seriously, life is too short to be treated like shit.
• rramadass 7y ago
  I can tell you that much of "Middle Management" today falls under the category of "Bullshit Jobs" and "Leadership BS" (books have been published on both). It is mainly due to mindset and the way that company hierarchies are structured. "Management" is considered prestigious and hence is given more money then they are worth. Everybody wants to be a "Manager" in one form or another (there is something in the human psyche which wants to lord it over others whether needed or not). The erroneous belief that if you have a team of 4-6 people you need somebody to "manage" them is ingrained in the industry. Thus the proliferation of management "levels" as axioms. Ideally they should grow organically only as a need arises otherwise a single level between Strategic/Vision <-> Middle/Operational <-> Engineering/Production should suffice (think of them as concentric circles with Engineering at the core). In a organization with a such a structure true middle management exists and you will see them involved in everything since they are the conduit between the end-goal and the means of production.
• ricky2323 7y ago
  For some reason Middle Level Managers are the strongest opponents of remote work.
• cm2012 7y ago
  By the way, when I did a poll of how much time during the day people actually worked (including meetings), senior people worked the same amount as juniors: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17068804 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17068804. Time spent working might be irrespective of seniority on average.
• unnouinceput 7y ago
  My personal experience was at Siemens VDO (Automotive). And here was the layout: teams (me part of one with 5 other programmers) -> team leader (programmer also, my direct boss) -> groups (my group was BCM - Body Control Module) -> Group leader (non-programmer, the middle manager) -> Department (Hardware for me) -> Head of department -> Board of directors -> CEO. After a few weeks I started to learn that the middle managers roles are to make sure to set broad goals within their groups/teams and to make sure resources are available to programmers to make those goals achievable before deadline. So my interaction with the middle management was very easy - give them the list of resources I need it to make sure the goals are done before deadline. And in doing so I've learned the absolute best truth about this - power is a balance. I have the power, as a programmer, to make life miserable to a middle manager if he failed to fulfill my list of demands. Also he had the power to make my life miserable if he fulfilled his part of the bargain and I do not achieve those goals before deadline. So after learning this truth instead of taking a "sir, yes sir" ass-kissing attitude like usually people do when they meet somebody above them on the ladder, I started to treat them as buddies with "Hi George, how's the house redecoration working" style. Definitely dispelled any tensions and made both of our lives easier. Also I had on other organization I worked for a stuck-up-ass type who expected everybody to bow before him. Since I was never the bow-before-you type sure we did a collision shortly after I started working there. My direct boss also told me to suck it up because he was afraid of that guy too. I didn't like it so next thing I did I went directly to CEO and complained about that stuck-up-ass manager and that he was making my life hard without a real reason. Long story short, for the remaining of my time there (another year) that guy was only honey and sugar with me while still remaining an a*hole with the rest. It all depends of how you crush the bad behavior on 1st encounter in the end.
• janbernhart 7y ago
  Instead of asking what they do (which could indeed be an odd question), ask what their vision is. Most leaders like to talk about it. While they explain their vision, you can ask questions around how to get their, what their role is in this plan, etc.