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I spent some time as a middle manager, talked way too much with friends in similar situations at other places and I learned the following: * It is very easy to

I spent some time as a middle manager, talked way too much with friends in similar situations at other places and I learned the following: * It is very easy to be both very busy and do nothing useful at all. Just accept and schedule a bunch of meetings. * Your potential of improving things depends mostly on the C-level suite. Trying to get buy-in from other levels of management is a waste of time. * Middle managers are quite often recreating other orgs they aspire to without any thought if their prescriptions are suitable for their orgs. * The C-level are actually behaving more like individual contributors than managers. The CEO is typically working mostly on closing deals and attracting investors. * Lower level managers are often created from senior or valuable employees because a title change is the only way of rewarding them and using their experience * Some of the best managers are HR professionals, but they are completely sidelined. HR is working to protect the companies which for good and evil can clash with your goals. * No one is a prophet in their own village, not matter how loyal you are climbing the ladder, and how much you learn along the way chances are they are still going to hire someone from the outside to be your boss that knows less than you. It's better to switch orgs when making big jumps in your career. * There are certain pure management skills (everything with budgets) which are quite valuable, and managers are either undertrained So, if I ever run my own company of over a 100 people this is what I'm going to do: - make sure executives / senior managers are doing as much decision making as possible, while accepting input from every senior person in the company, manager or not. - Promote only experts in their fields, preferably from your own ranks as managers. - Instead of introducing hierarchy, consider instead providing managers with experts in management as deputies. Recruit fresh MBAs or experienced HR professionals. This way they help instead of hindering. - Make sure every role has ways to grow while remaining individual contributors. Just give them levels, like Software Engineer lvl 12. Make sure they have free capacity to get delegated tasks or for their own initiatives.

JustSomeNobody 4y ago
> * Lower level managers are often created from senior or valuable employees because a title change is the only way of rewarding them and using their experience Ah, yes, because there's some made up BS chart in HR that shows how much each job pays. "Oh, we can't pay you more than $X." BS, you can - you just won't for some stupid made up reason.
zanybear 4y ago
>>>>* Lower level managers are often created from senior or valuable employees because a title change is the only way of rewarding them and using their experience This is the part I’ll never understand. In order to give a larger (than managers) salary you will have to change the title. Why?
Phiwise_ 4y ago
>- Instead of introducing hierarchy, consider instead providing managers with experts in management as deputies. Recruit fresh MBAs or experienced HR professionals. This way they help instead of hindering. Genuinely losing my mind at how good of an idea this is. Imagine the effectiveness boost if even half of some large tech company's managers were instead engineers with a manager deputy. They'd probably be the next letter shoved into FAANG.
ttyprintk 4y ago
These are all such good conclusions that it’s valuable to ask why any particular one wouldn’t apply for an organization.
- dimitar 4y ago
  I assumed employees that are generally high-skilled. So pretty much all of them don't apply if that isn't the case. Technical Experts-managers are unnecessary where the work is menial, very physical or low-skilled. Or simply best practices or standards are established and followed uniformly. Or regulations are so strict there is little variation on how things are done. Or the company is driven mostly by brands or advertising.

JustSomeNobody 4y ago

> * Lower level managers are often created from senior or valuable employees because a title change is the only way of rewarding them and using their experience Ah, yes, because there's some made up BS chart in HR that shows how much each job pays. "Oh, we can't pay you more than $X." BS, you can - you just won't for some stupid made up reason.

zanybear 4y ago

>>>>* Lower level managers are often created from senior or valuable employees because a title change is the only way of rewarding them and using their experience This is the part I’ll never understand. In order to give a larger (than managers) salary you will have to change the title. Why?

Phiwise_ 4y ago

>- Instead of introducing hierarchy, consider instead providing managers with experts in management as deputies. Recruit fresh MBAs or experienced HR professionals. This way they help instead of hindering. Genuinely losing my mind at how good of an idea this is. Imagine the effectiveness boost if even half of some large tech company's managers were instead engineers with a manager deputy. They'd probably be the next letter shoved into FAANG.

ttyprintk 4y ago

These are all such good conclusions that it’s valuable to ask why any particular one wouldn’t apply for an organization.

dimitar 4y ago
I assumed employees that are generally high-skilled. So pretty much all of them don't apply if that isn't the case. Technical Experts-managers are unnecessary where the work is menial, very physical or low-skilled. Or simply best practices or standards are established and followed uniformly. Or regulations are so strict there is little variation on how things are done. Or the company is driven mostly by brands or advertising.