4 ms·

In my experience, what managers do is - shoot the shit with us in endless meetings - present regular progress update slide decks that no one cares about - pe

In my experience, what managers do is - shoot the shit with us in endless meetings - present regular progress update slide decks that no one cares about - periodically get together to determine the comp of people who actually work

pc86 6y ago
This is just the same ridiculous, overly cynical nonsense people have been saying for decades regurgitated. - Good relationships are a requirement for a good manager. - You may not care about them but executives do, and the manager is judged on their quality. - If you don't think managerial work is work you must have truly had some terrible managers.
- civilized 6y ago
  Congrats on having a different opinion/experience, but I don't think yours is any more valid or any less "ridiculous/nonsense" than mine. It's my experience and if you think you know better than me what the real value of managers is in my world, I think that's arrogant and a bit delusional, honestly.
  - joshuamorton 6y ago
    > It's my experience and if you think you know better than me what the real value of managers is in my world Your inability to judge of the value of a manager, even a bad manager, doesn't make someone else delusional. Reductively, if it were really the case that no one cared about the slide decks your managers were presenting, they'd be told to stop and do other things instead. So clearly someone does. That someone obviously isn't you, but that doesn't really matter if someone else gains enough value from that communication.
    - civilized 6y ago
      > Your inability to judge of the value of a manager, even a bad manager, doesn't make someone else delusional. Doubling down on the arrogance! Funny stuff. Do you make all these assumptions about things you know nothing about in your actual job as well? > that doesn't really matter if someone else gains enough value from that communication It would matter if the managers cared about all the employee time they were wasting with these meetings. Managers could present to only the people who care and not demand the attendance of those for whom the material is uninformative.
      - joshuamorton 6y ago
        > Doubling down on the arrogance! I'm a different person. And it's not arrogance to re-assert someone else isn't delusional for disagreeing with you. > It would matter if the managers cared about all the employee time they were wasting with these meetings. This doesn't actually address what I said. Someone seems to think these meetings have value.
        civilized 6y ago
        I did acknowledge the technical accuracy of your statement, implicitly, before moving on to something more interesting. It's just too banal of a point to spend a full sentence on. Of course someone is demanding these slides. Feel free to mentally amend my original claim. Sometimes I write in a humorous, rough way, maybe it isn't for you. Don't worry, I don't hold all managers in contempt based on my own limited experience in my particular org of my particular company in my particular industry. I'll make sure to update this post if I come into contact with ones whose contribution I respect more.
- watwut 6y ago
  > - Good relationships are a requirement for a good manager. Except that managers tend to have pretty bad relationships with their peers and have routinely bad relationships with people under them. It is to large extend structural, managerial work pretty much rarely involves actual cooperation with people on the same level. > - You may not care about them but executives do, and the manager is judged on their quality. They are judged by the relationship toward executive primary. That has little to do with quality of relationship to anyone else.
  - UncleMeat 6y ago
    Manager here. I think I have good relationships with my peers and vice versa. We cooperate literally constantly and often help each other with things while receiving nothing in return. When I look around my org, I see this as the norm.

pc86 6y ago

This is just the same ridiculous, overly cynical nonsense people have been saying for decades regurgitated. - Good relationships are a requirement for a good manager. - You may not care about them but executives do, and the manager is judged on their quality. - If you don't think managerial work is work you must have truly had some terrible managers.

civilized 6y ago
Congrats on having a different opinion/experience, but I don't think yours is any more valid or any less "ridiculous/nonsense" than mine. It's my experience and if you think you know better than me what the real value of managers is in my world, I think that's arrogant and a bit delusional, honestly.
- joshuamorton 6y ago
  > It's my experience and if you think you know better than me what the real value of managers is in my world Your inability to judge of the value of a manager, even a bad manager, doesn't make someone else delusional. Reductively, if it were really the case that no one cared about the slide decks your managers were presenting, they'd be told to stop and do other things instead. So clearly someone does. That someone obviously isn't you, but that doesn't really matter if someone else gains enough value from that communication.
  - civilized 6y ago
    > Your inability to judge of the value of a manager, even a bad manager, doesn't make someone else delusional. Doubling down on the arrogance! Funny stuff. Do you make all these assumptions about things you know nothing about in your actual job as well? > that doesn't really matter if someone else gains enough value from that communication It would matter if the managers cared about all the employee time they were wasting with these meetings. Managers could present to only the people who care and not demand the attendance of those for whom the material is uninformative.
    - joshuamorton 6y ago
      > Doubling down on the arrogance! I'm a different person. And it's not arrogance to re-assert someone else isn't delusional for disagreeing with you. > It would matter if the managers cared about all the employee time they were wasting with these meetings. This doesn't actually address what I said. Someone seems to think these meetings have value.
      - civilized 6y ago
        I did acknowledge the technical accuracy of your statement, implicitly, before moving on to something more interesting. It's just too banal of a point to spend a full sentence on. Of course someone is demanding these slides. Feel free to mentally amend my original claim. Sometimes I write in a humorous, rough way, maybe it isn't for you. Don't worry, I don't hold all managers in contempt based on my own limited experience in my particular org of my particular company in my particular industry. I'll make sure to update this post if I come into contact with ones whose contribution I respect more.
watwut 6y ago
> - Good relationships are a requirement for a good manager. Except that managers tend to have pretty bad relationships with their peers and have routinely bad relationships with people under them. It is to large extend structural, managerial work pretty much rarely involves actual cooperation with people on the same level. > - You may not care about them but executives do, and the manager is judged on their quality. They are judged by the relationship toward executive primary. That has little to do with quality of relationship to anyone else.
- UncleMeat 6y ago
  Manager here. I think I have good relationships with my peers and vice versa. We cooperate literally constantly and often help each other with things while receiving nothing in return. When I look around my org, I see this as the norm.