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But do you want managers who are people who want to be managers? It seems to me that many people who want to be managers are motivated by wanting to boss people

But do you want managers who are people who want to be managers? It seems to me that many people who want to be managers are motivated by wanting to boss people around, i.e. they want power, not necessarily money. And some don’t want to do “the work” whatever that work might be. I really think we need more “reluctant leaders”: people who are good at leadership but don’t want to lead, and yet can be relied upon to lead because of their sense of duty, especially their duty to the team. People who say, shit, I really don’t want to do this but damnit if I don’t step up, this will be a failure.

rg111 4y ago
The kind of people that find pleasure in bossing people around also tend to have fragile ego. If you pay them less than the people they are managing, they will not tend to do take the job. So, paying managers less may weed out people on an ego trip, in theory.
- noirbot 4y ago
  The problem is that then it tends to become a sort of charity work. I've had multiple managers who essentially felt like they were burnout martyring themselves into serious problems in their life to try to support my team. I've been blessed with generally good managers, but they've all worked way more and way harder than me for less pay and it's honestly made me feel pretty awful for them.
ethbr0 4y ago
Middle management should be like jury duty -- something assigned randomly to a team member, then served for a set period. And company processes should be engineered so that a bad/ineffectual manager can't break them, with everything that can be devolved to the team itself. And hiring should be done on the basis that a new employee will likely be a manager at some point. The best managers I've had were all reluctant, so selecting against people who want to be managers seems like a great idea.
- vkou 4y ago
  > Middle management should be like jury duty -- something assigned randomly to a team member, then served for a set period. Please, no. A good middle manager is a shit umbrella, a bad one is a shit funnel. Most of the ICs I've worked with would not make good managers. Not because they are bad people, but because they don't currently have the skillset to manage. I'd rather not have them spend 6 months developing their skills by managing me, only to be replaced by the next person in line.
  - ethbr0 4y ago
    A bad middle manager tends to be a bad middle manager because they're empowered to do dumb things: set upcoming workload, badger people about adherence to mythical project schedule, etc. The majority of these tasks could be devolved to the team itself, if an organization wanted to. Without that political pressure, I'd trust even the worst IC on my team to serve in a manager role, because the consequences of them doing a poor job would be small.
  - lesam 4y ago
    Who in the rest of your organization is producing so much shit that your manager’s primary job is to be a shit umbrella? What productive purpose are those people serving if your manager’s job is effectively to work against them? Maybe the people producing the shit need to go too.
    - vkou 4y ago
      > Who in the rest of your organization is producing so much shit that your manager’s primary job is to be a shit umbrella? His manager, the various proxies for the customers, events outside of anyone's control. > What productive purpose are those people serving if your manager’s job is effectively to work against them? Everyone with power in a modern corporation is looking out for their agenda, and their interests rarely align with their peers, and even less rarely with the line people. Think of directors pursuing weird-ass pet projects, think of product managers that want to devote 0% effort on stability and 100% on features, think of some other org dumping work that they ought to be doing onto you. Also, all of these problems exist on a much smaller, less dramatic scale, on a day-to-day in every firm that does anything of note. Everyone wants their asks done today, and its the manager's job to keep all the people asking for stuff playing by the rules, and reasonably happy, and civil. They aren't bad people, they are just being rewarded for meeting particular goals, and they are working towards them. > Maybe the people producing the shit need to go too. Maybe, but whether they will or not is not under the control of anyone in the trenches. The modern corporation is an authoritarian institution, and if you don't have the ear of a decision-maker, you can't exactly get someone else fired for being bad at their job. Especially when their job is telling you what to do.
RajT88 4y ago
> It seems to me that many people who want to be managers are motivated by wanting to boss people around, i.e. they want power, not necessarily money. I've known a few of these. Power and money, usually. Mainly because they were born with money, and think they deserve as much or more than their parents accumulated. I wouldn't say they're the most toxic people I know, but they're in about the 85th percentile.
tekknik 4y ago
A majority of them may be like this, but eventually you’ll meet that one manager that actually seems to care and goes out of their way to help you. Then you’ll realize some people that are looking to be managers are not power hungry narcissists.

rg111 4y ago

The kind of people that find pleasure in bossing people around also tend to have fragile ego. If you pay them less than the people they are managing, they will not tend to do take the job. So, paying managers less may weed out people on an ego trip, in theory.

noirbot 4y ago
The problem is that then it tends to become a sort of charity work. I've had multiple managers who essentially felt like they were burnout martyring themselves into serious problems in their life to try to support my team. I've been blessed with generally good managers, but they've all worked way more and way harder than me for less pay and it's honestly made me feel pretty awful for them.

ethbr0 4y ago

Middle management should be like jury duty -- something assigned randomly to a team member, then served for a set period. And company processes should be engineered so that a bad/ineffectual manager can't break them, with everything that can be devolved to the team itself. And hiring should be done on the basis that a new employee will likely be a manager at some point. The best managers I've had were all reluctant, so selecting against people who want to be managers seems like a great idea.

vkou 4y ago
> Middle management should be like jury duty -- something assigned randomly to a team member, then served for a set period. Please, no. A good middle manager is a shit umbrella, a bad one is a shit funnel. Most of the ICs I've worked with would not make good managers. Not because they are bad people, but because they don't currently have the skillset to manage. I'd rather not have them spend 6 months developing their skills by managing me, only to be replaced by the next person in line.
- ethbr0 4y ago
  A bad middle manager tends to be a bad middle manager because they're empowered to do dumb things: set upcoming workload, badger people about adherence to mythical project schedule, etc. The majority of these tasks could be devolved to the team itself, if an organization wanted to. Without that political pressure, I'd trust even the worst IC on my team to serve in a manager role, because the consequences of them doing a poor job would be small.
- lesam 4y ago
  Who in the rest of your organization is producing so much shit that your manager’s primary job is to be a shit umbrella? What productive purpose are those people serving if your manager’s job is effectively to work against them? Maybe the people producing the shit need to go too.
  - vkou 4y ago
    > Who in the rest of your organization is producing so much shit that your manager’s primary job is to be a shit umbrella? His manager, the various proxies for the customers, events outside of anyone's control. > What productive purpose are those people serving if your manager’s job is effectively to work against them? Everyone with power in a modern corporation is looking out for their agenda, and their interests rarely align with their peers, and even less rarely with the line people. Think of directors pursuing weird-ass pet projects, think of product managers that want to devote 0% effort on stability and 100% on features, think of some other org dumping work that they ought to be doing onto you. Also, all of these problems exist on a much smaller, less dramatic scale, on a day-to-day in every firm that does anything of note. Everyone wants their asks done today, and its the manager's job to keep all the people asking for stuff playing by the rules, and reasonably happy, and civil. They aren't bad people, they are just being rewarded for meeting particular goals, and they are working towards them. > Maybe the people producing the shit need to go too. Maybe, but whether they will or not is not under the control of anyone in the trenches. The modern corporation is an authoritarian institution, and if you don't have the ear of a decision-maker, you can't exactly get someone else fired for being bad at their job. Especially when their job is telling you what to do.

RajT88 4y ago

> It seems to me that many people who want to be managers are motivated by wanting to boss people around, i.e. they want power, not necessarily money. I've known a few of these. Power and money, usually. Mainly because they were born with money, and think they deserve as much or more than their parents accumulated. I wouldn't say they're the most toxic people I know, but they're in about the 85th percentile.

tekknik 4y ago

A majority of them may be like this, but eventually you’ll meet that one manager that actually seems to care and goes out of their way to help you. Then you’ll realize some people that are looking to be managers are not power hungry narcissists.