I like how you think because largely correct. I believe it has probably gotten much worse in “inflation driven bubble growth” times we had the last ten years. N

I like how you think because largely correct. I believe it has probably gotten much worse in “inflation driven bubble growth” times we had the last ten years. Non productive individual contributors have proliferated … because why not hire and retain them if money is free? Managers are 2nd or 3rd order derivatives of IC productivity. If you have over-hired and too many managers to the point where no one knows what productivity is or who is doing any work, then everyone would prefer to be management since no real work is getting done anyway, and any of the work you do as an IC often gets credited : stolen : reassigned to others to spread the credit around. I categories managers in the following ways: 1. Truly awful or toxic, malicious Actively interfere with you , fight with you, stop you from being productive. I have had several of these. They are the cancer of companies. 2. Leave you alone This is one of my favorite types of manager. They just kind of hire you and let you survive and do whatever. Unless you run into political challenges requiring real management, or need resources or get lost. If you are highly self motivated and talented and can figure out what to do yourself, these are fine, mostly. 3. Enablers : Encouragers These are the managers who really accelerated my career. I have literally only ever had 2 of them, after working for like 20 years. My personal estimate is that out of 13 managers, 2 have been excellent. That is a really bad ratio. Of the 13, 3 have been the leave me alone kind which was ok for a bit. 4-5 have been actively malicious or completely incompetent to the point of making me leave. The rest in between somewhere.