4 ms·

Good middle management is hard. Bad middle management (as popularized by the pointy-haired boss of Dilbert) is easy.

user123456780 5y ago
As a former middle manager I completely agree with this. It can be a very difficult role. I called it the the A-symmetry of knowledge. As a tech person on tools you have such a small view of the company at large and all of the other issues that are going on. Most of which you as a manager cannot/should not share with your team. I have had tech leads come to me with solid solutions for their little slice of the world except it would be detrimental to another team or project that you can't talk about yet. So you have to delicately tip to about your tech team with out upsetting them. Which is difficult because they largely see you as useless middle management. All this while doing the dance with the senior managers/execs justifying why your team deserves bonuses and pay rises, or taking their half baked ideas and 180 flips in directions and trying to calm them and figure out what problem it is they actually want solved.
- gmadsen 5y ago
  unless it is required by law, such as ITAR projects, a company intentionally siloing information from groups would be a huge red flag. I understand that with a company the size of Apple, that becomes a liability, and maybe thats why I prefer start ups. I need to feel like I can trust my coworkers for me to be most effective
- joeblubaugh 5y ago
  The idea that you can’t talk about it is fundamentally flawed. If you can’t give your reports the information they need to be effective, you and the company are failing the people who get the work done.
  - aahortwwy 5y ago
    Yup. Super common to see organizations habitually creating problems for themselves out of thin air and then becoming wildly inefficient as a result.
slgeorge 5y ago
Actually ... It's equally hard to do good or bad management, since most of the time you have no idea if you're achieving either outcome - and neither does anyone else. The problem with all forms of management is that it's completely unscientific. The main resource you're working with is a "human" which has emotions and who will respond to inputs in very different ways depending on all sorts of factors you as a manager don't know about. And, when you put a group of "humans" together you might expect a direct increase in productivity - 6 humans should be 6x more productive right - you'd be wrong. Also, for whatever reasons the dynamics of the individual humans change in groups! They are differently productive depending on what other humans they work with! And, since there's no scientifically proven way of categorising them - you can't even tell which ones will work well with other ones. Oh and the big joke, even if you get that working, sometimes they *change* and then some part of the group is broken for some unknown reason. Then there's the problem of measurement, and I don't mean the team members. As a manager trying to measure the outcome of your own efforts is difficult, bordering on impossible - maybe something you did changed something, on the other hand it might be some other factor you know nothing about. Finally, you might expect that the individual "humans" might know what makes them individually more productive. But, nope - most humans have no idea what makes them individually more productive, and then throw in a team setting and you're in a whole world of pain. Some of them think they're "analytical" and can't tell that they're dragged around by their emotions, love life, caffeine, commute or sunshine quota. There's a variety of 'received wisdom' stories they tell themselves, but it's often just a random walk. So actually ALL management is hard, and you often have a equal chance of doing it "well" or "badly" on pretty much a daily basis. It's as hard to do it badly, as it is to do it well since most of time you're not sure if either is happening.
- jimmygrapes 5y ago
  Don't forget that as a manager there's usually a ton of information about the humans you're in charge of helping (both up and down the chain) which you're not allowed to know, either by law or social norms, and some that you know only partly through indiscretions or observation, and even if you do know, it may be information you aren't supposed to use for your decision making. And that's before getting to the rest of the "resources" that are expected to be wrangled.
pxx 5y ago
The PHB is a line manager, not a middle manager.

As a former middle manager I completely agree with this. It can be a very difficult role. I called it the the A-symmetry of knowledge. As a tech person on tools you have such a small view of the company at large and all of the other issues that are going on. Most of which you as a manager cannot/should not share with your team. I have had tech leads come to me with solid solutions for their little slice of the world except it would be detrimental to another team or project that you can't talk about yet. So you have to delicately tip to about your tech team with out upsetting them. Which is difficult because they largely see you as useless middle management. All this while doing the dance with the senior managers/execs justifying why your team deserves bonuses and pay rises, or taking their half baked ideas and 180 flips in directions and trying to calm them and figure out what problem it is they actually want solved.

gmadsen 5y ago
unless it is required by law, such as ITAR projects, a company intentionally siloing information from groups would be a huge red flag. I understand that with a company the size of Apple, that becomes a liability, and maybe thats why I prefer start ups. I need to feel like I can trust my coworkers for me to be most effective
joeblubaugh 5y ago
The idea that you can’t talk about it is fundamentally flawed. If you can’t give your reports the information they need to be effective, you and the company are failing the people who get the work done.
- aahortwwy 5y ago
  Yup. Super common to see organizations habitually creating problems for themselves out of thin air and then becoming wildly inefficient as a result.

slgeorge 5y ago

Actually ... It's equally hard to do good or bad management, since most of the time you have no idea if you're achieving either outcome - and neither does anyone else. The problem with all forms of management is that it's completely unscientific. The main resource you're working with is a "human" which has emotions and who will respond to inputs in very different ways depending on all sorts of factors you as a manager don't know about. And, when you put a group of "humans" together you might expect a direct increase in productivity - 6 humans should be 6x more productive right - you'd be wrong. Also, for whatever reasons the dynamics of the individual humans change in groups! They are differently productive depending on what other humans they work with! And, since there's no scientifically proven way of categorising them - you can't even tell which ones will work well with other ones. Oh and the big joke, even if you get that working, sometimes they *change* and then some part of the group is broken for some unknown reason. Then there's the problem of measurement, and I don't mean the team members. As a manager trying to measure the outcome of your own efforts is difficult, bordering on impossible - maybe something you did changed something, on the other hand it might be some other factor you know nothing about. Finally, you might expect that the individual "humans" might know what makes them individually more productive. But, nope - most humans have no idea what makes them individually more productive, and then throw in a team setting and you're in a whole world of pain. Some of them think they're "analytical" and can't tell that they're dragged around by their emotions, love life, caffeine, commute or sunshine quota. There's a variety of 'received wisdom' stories they tell themselves, but it's often just a random walk. So actually ALL management is hard, and you often have a equal chance of doing it "well" or "badly" on pretty much a daily basis. It's as hard to do it badly, as it is to do it well since most of time you're not sure if either is happening.

jimmygrapes 5y ago
Don't forget that as a manager there's usually a ton of information about the humans you're in charge of helping (both up and down the chain) which you're not allowed to know, either by law or social norms, and some that you know only partly through indiscretions or observation, and even if you do know, it may be information you aren't supposed to use for your decision making. And that's before getting to the rest of the "resources" that are expected to be wrangled.

pxx 5y ago

The PHB is a line manager, not a middle manager.