8 ms·
Conscious unbossing
- jghn 2y agoDoes anyone really aspire to be a middle manager? That's like the worst spot in the hierarchy
- nine_zeros 2y agoPeople with self-esteem issues who want to fill a deep-seated insecurity about social status find the org-chart as an adequate way to fill up their needs. The other is MBA grads/project managers who paid big bucks to be able to get a high paying job producing nothing but need a place in the company.
- jghn 2y agoBut why wouldn't they aspire to be upper management?
- nine_zeros 2y agoThey often realize that the director title is good enough for their insecurities. Contentment sets in. Any lofty-sounding title is good enough.
- klodolph 2y agoOne meets people who are really trying to look important by having more reports than the other managers. People who use Linkedin, say “best practices” without irony, and like to tell stories about what programming was like 25 years ago when they were a junior engineer shipping Windows software. Then, mixed in with those folks, are a few people who are good at working with upper management, understand how the machine works, and build a pipeline of projects. And a few rare people who fix departments, create long-term programs, and know how to train managers. You don’t meet many in this last group, though.
- hn_go_brrrrr 2y agoWhat's wrong with "best practices"? I get the feeling the best practices you're complaining about are TPS reports, whereas I'm thinking more like "don't ship to prod on Fridays".
- klodolph 2y ago> I get the feeling the best practices you're complaining about are TPS reports, I’m talking about the actual term “best practices”, and not the actual practices themselves. The term is an ineffective way to communicate something. Managers and engineers alike should be able to explain what they do in terms that can be connected with concrete actions / concerns and understandable business goals. Terms like “best practices” are ineffective at doing that. Just like there are code smells, this is a “communication smell” and makes me suspicious that there are underlying problems or weaknesses in the speaker’s ability to communicate clearly. “Best practices” also implies some kind of independence of situation which is fictitious. “This team doesn’t use best practices for deploying code” -> unclear. “This team doesn’t use CI/CD, engineers spend too much time resolving merge conflicts, and we see too many regressions make it into production” -> clear. If you need to put it in a bullet point, you can say something like “improve velocity”, “ship fewer bugs”, or “less downtime”. I’m a fan of ambiguous or unclear language, but “best practices” strikes an unfortunate balance of sounding like it means something but wasting your words saying not much at all.
- SpicyLemonZest 2y ago> “Best practices” also implies some kind of independence of situation which is fictitious. If you, say, have 30 teams whose projects come together into a product with a 99.9% SLA, you can’t have each team make completely independent judgments of what practices are best for their situation. You can try to, and many growing companies do. What you inevitably find is that the aggregate set of problems is too large, even when every team has a plausible story for why their individual situation makes sense. The only solution is to write down a “best practices” manual and insist that everyone must follow it, even if they don’t think some practice or another is necessary in their situation.
- GuB-42 2y agoBecause that's how you become an upper manager. Beside that, some people simply like the job. They like to manage people they actually know, without being too technical. Higher than that and you may lose human contact with people who are doing the job, lower than that and you are doing the job yourself.
- benhurmarcel 2y agoWell in most companies it pays more than being an IC or line manager. Sure it sucks but you get more money for it.
- jrmg 2y agoThis is presented as revolutionary, but it’s not clear to me that the results would’ve been any different if they’d surveyed the older generations at the same age.
- cjbgkagh 2y agoReminds me of an Onion Skit from 16 years ago; Youths don’t want to participate in office politics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHm7-Z4spHw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHm7-Z4spHw
- Over2Chars 2y agoThe middle manager, by some corporate career paths, is the top of the IC food chain. Ergo managers are usually paid better than the top IC. This is, of course, stupidity at it's finest, draining top IC talent into PHB mediocrity. A few companies don't do this, they are the smarter ones. My impression is that this is not typical.
- roughly 2y ago> managers are usually paid better than the top IC This has not been my experience most places I’ve worked - you’ve gotta get a couple rungs up the management ladder (director or such) before the pay scale gets above staff and sr staff. (It’s how we wound up with a few people at a previous gig managing teams as staff engineers - they didn’t want to take the pay cut for the title.)
- WantonQuantum 2y agoI started as a developer at the age of 21 and in the next few years moved up a few levels until I wasn't developing any more. I decided I didn't like it and so left the company for a dev role somewhere else. Same thing happened again until I realised that I just want to be a dev. I'm 52 now and loving being a dev.
- datavirtue 2y agoGetting some level of management and learning there is no authority of responsibility given to the role. It's just another type of task handler. The disillusionment is common when people crave responsibility and realize it isn't forthcoming. Had you been granted the authority to oversee a critical responsibility/project/initiative you might have been imbued. It's very exciting, like a drug, to be given responsibility for which you know that you are immediately shit canned (by your friends no less) if it doesn't go well or rewarded handsomely if you get it over the finish line. You have to hold key peoples' (founders/investors/executives) trust to get those roles because your success/failure ripples into them right quick.
- c0balt 2y agoFrom knowing a few swe/sysadmin people who have eventually ended up or choose the management path in team lead/middle management, most of them didn't plan to become managers but it more less happened to be a natural career progression at some point. In my experience these people also mostly are effective managers because they have practical domain knowledge on the projects/teams they are managing. I see it as a normal thing to progress into, if your people skills are up to the task. A senior IC role is also nice but can be harder to get in certain organizations (however may be significantly less stressful).
- Over2Chars 2y agoThey go for the $. Or else they figure that they'll "be their own boss", get to push their opinions on others (not realizing that this is a difficult position, and you might have a bias towards your own answers even if they're not the best outcome), and get paid more. Even if "they are the most effective managers" initially, it won't last. As the pressures to sit in endless meetings, tow the upper management line, create endless spreadsheets, they become less and less knowledgeable in their domain. I've had great managers who were "hands on" domain experts, and some who weren't. Luckily, the corporate trend seems to be towards so-called "flat hierarchies" and to fire these chair warmers. I for one welcome our AI middle manager overlords.
- bhaney 2y agoI would have expected a higher percentage
- Conscat 2y agoPerhaps the remaining 48% just want to be employed.
- digitaltrees 2y agosaid every generation ever. and yet...
- Over2Chars 2y agoWith any luck, middle managers will be replaced by AI within a few years. The dumbest chat bot provides comparable advice and is less demotivating. Not that most middle managers are worth more than a bucket of spit, and many are actively harmful to a companies bottom line (e.g. see Board disagreements about Intel layoffs and the role of risk-adverse middle managers in tanking the once mighty Intel. Undoubtedly, a similar phenom tanked Nissan).
- brightball 2y agoNobody wants to be a middle manager. I’d be concerned if anyone ever wanted to be a middle manager. If you’re not C level and somebody reports to you, you’re a middle manager though.
- WantonQuantum 2y agoMiddle manager is not a precise term so opinions on what is and is not a middle manager differ but in larger companies there are definitely senior managers and executive management.
- jonahx 2y agoAll of the replies to GP sound like desperate attempts not to self-identify as a middle manager. GP's definition matches common usage: To people not invested in this game, if you are manager at a large company and not C-suite, you're a middle manager.
- Brian_K_White 2y agoObviously silly. There are obviously a large bulk of managers who do not manage other managers, and they could reasonably only be called simply "managers". What would be the excuse for adding "middle" to them when they are not in the middle of anything?
- jfengel 2y agoThey are above the employees and below the C suite. You probably could just call them "managers" with little loss of meaning. But the term "middle management" can connote a kind of useless that makes them different from "front line managers". The difference seems to depend on how useless your front line managers appear to be.
- SpicyLemonZest 2y agoI get what you’re saying, but it’s more than a little like someone who isn’t invested in football calling everyone on defense a “defensive back”. Middle management is a term of art referring to a specific role that works quite differently from the more common first line managers. Insisting on it as a catch-all term accomplishes nothing but making things more confusing.
- aetherson 2y agoClearly the workforce couldn't support a situation in which almost half of everyone was a manager, so...
- Over2Chars 2y agoGeez, did we work at the same companies?
- d--b 2y agoSo 48% would not mind being a middle manager? That’s a lot of middle management
- asielen 2y agoIn my 15 years in small and mid-sized tech, I've found the most useless managers are senior managers. Good team leads and second line managers can make or break an organization. But they are the least respected roles at a company and gets thrown under the bus first. Most companies don't invest anything in training new managers or setting clear roles and responsibilities for managers. Senior management never faces any accountability but can make big massive changes to an org without consideration for implementation.
- UncleMeat 2y agoThis is my experience at big tech too. I've had great managers. When I've managed people, they've appeared to genuinely say that I was doing a good job. I've interacted with one Director and one Vice President ever who seemed like they were worth a damn.
- ahefner 2y agoOh, I don't know - in my (admittedly limited and very individual / company-specific) experience, the senior management was hard to relate to from the perspective of us rank and file, but clearly had the Sword of Damocles over their head at all times, and tended to get swept away arbitrarily every few years as the winds of corporate politics changes direction. It seemed to require some exceptional execution (or luck) to defer this cycle for even a year or two. Depends what you mean by senior management, of course. I'm thinking mostly the "VP / SVP of Engineering" type role, and to a lesser degree, one hop down, the "Senior Director" folks, who seemed to be subject to the same phenomenon but on a slightly slower cycle.
- HappMacDonald 2y agoMy understanding is that all corporate positions above rank and file — and especially the C-levels — live in a meat grinder where the only viabile strat is "figure out how to kill competition on the corporate chaos/ladder before it kills you". Of course this acts as a filtering mechanism to refine psychopathy and their decision tree about how to treat their labor force, the communities their corporations exist within, their customers, and even their investors reflect how they've treated people to get where they are already: exploit and discard.
- zeroonetwothree 2y agoWhat percent of workers are middle managers? 10% or less I imagine…
- bigfishrunning 2y agoI honestly think it's like 50%
- extr 2y agoTry again without the phrase “middle manager” which has a derogatory meme attached to it, as evidenced by this very comment section. If you think you’ve invented a better (scalable) system than having ICs report up through a hierarchy with defined scope and responsibilities, you have probably just reinvented “management”.
- saikia81 2y agoI think commenters are being critical of the hierarchycal system with so many levels. It really differs per country.
- theideaofcoffee 2y agoFound the middle manager. The current system must not be criticized because no perfect replacement has been found. C’mon. There are deep flaws with how hierarchical organizations are run and how incompetent people are put in the positions with most capacity to do damage. Those ideas most definitely need to be discussed, even if there is no clear winner in terms of how to definitively improve things.
- Imnimo 2y agoThis doesn't really relate to the question of middle management, but it's interesting to compare the Canadian and British versions of this article: https://www.robert-walters.ca/insights/news/blog/Concious-unbossing.html https://www.robert-walters.ca/insights/news/blog/Concious-un... https://www.robertwalters.co.uk/insights/news/blog/conscious-unbossing.html https://www.robertwalters.co.uk/insights/news/blog/conscious... They both have comments ostensibly from "Lucy Bisset, Director of Robert Walters North" and "Martin Fox, Managing Director of Robert Walters Canada". But the two have eerily similar thoughts on these result: >Lucy Bisset, Director of Robert Walters North comments: “Gen-Z are known for their entrepreneurial mindset – preferring to bring their ‘whole self’ to projects and spend time cultivating their own brand and approach, rather than spending time managing others. >Martin Fox, Managing Director of Robert Walters Canada comments: “Gen-Z are known for their entrepreneurial mindset. They prefer to bring their ‘whole self’ to projects, focusing on building their own brand and approach rather than managing others.
- amiga386 2y agoThis is extremely dangerous to our democracy (according to Sinclair Broadcast Group): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZggCipbiHwE&t=33s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZggCipbiHwE&t=33s
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- magneticnorth 2y agoOh, huh, good catch. More of their quotes are just theaurus-substitution rephrasings: > Lucy concludes: “It’s clear mid-level management remains a lynchpin of any organisation, and to keep these roles filled employers need to innovate their strategies to make them more attractive ... > Martin concludes: “It’s clear that mid-level management is a cornerstone of any organization. To fill these roles, employers will need to rethink their strategies to make them more appealing ... And no by-line on the article - no actual human is claiming responsibility for writing this.
- ryandrake 2y ago
- newswasboring 2y agoThis comment section is hard to read for someone joining as middle manager on Monday.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y agoYou'll be different. We believe in you.
- FigurativeVoid 2y agoIt would be fascinating to see how this number trends over time. Many of my peers never wanted to be managers, but then they had children. Suddenly they were much more open to being managers and getting the associated pay increases. I suspect this number trends down over time.
- jarsin 2y agoWho can blame them after the previous generation gave them a perfect preview of life as a middle manager via Office and Office Space.
- sanderjd 2y agoThat was the generation before that. Everyone in Office Space and the managers in The Office are all (at least) two generations ahead of Gen Z. Time flies!
- herval 2y agoI doubt this wasn’t also true for young millenials or genx or boomers. 20 year-olds don’t generally want to be middle managers.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Animats 2y agoA few more years, and Microsoft Middle Manager 2.0 will be doing this job. AIs will take over middle management simply because they're faster and have more bandwidth than humans. They don't have to be smarter, just better coordinated. As Patton once said, "A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week." Programs already run lower management. At Uber and Amazon, the computer is the foreman.
- danjl 2y agoI'd go further and claim that it is easier to replace a middle manager, heck even a senior manager, using AI than it is to replace the ICs. As AI context windows increase to the point where they can ingest the important company documents and communications, the skills of an LLM are the ideal replacement for management.
- dragonwriter 2y agoThe primary function of any level of manager is to be an individual and distinct responsibility (including accountability) point. LLMs don't work for that.
- danjl 2y agoHow does being an individual help as a manager? How does it help to have someone who takes responsibility for mistakes compared to blaming those mistakes on an AI? Does taking responsibility for mistakes make you more money somehow? Maybe you're just being sarcastic?
- kazinator 2y agoWithout data about what previous generation said to exactly the same questions, at the same age, the conclusions comparing GenZ attitudes to those of prior generations are completely meaningless. Maybe GenX youth and young Boomers before them also thought management was fuddy-duddy. Hippies, hello? It wasn't GenZ that produced the movie Office Space, The Office sitcom or Dilbert. (Speaking of which, exposure to these kinds of cultural artifacts likely plays a role in the GenZ outlook.) For as long as I can remember, corporate management has been ridiculed in popular culture. It's a set of common tropes. A kindergarten kid saying they want to be a middle manager when they grow up can be predicted to be an instant howler.
- nytesky 2y agoI was going to say: what do you expect of the generation weaned on the Office? It’s been part of their zeitgeist since birth. I saw a GenZ today with a gag Dunder Mifflin rear view mirror badge hanger.
- zeckalpha 2y agoPhrasing of these headlines matter: 48% of GenZ professionals want to be middle managers.
- ITB 2y agoThat’s fitting because hierarchies would not work if those 52% wanted to be managers.
- martin-t 2y agoI wish cooperatives were more common and that society as a whole had more organizational memory and experience how to scale them.
- cedws 2y agoI'm 23. I don't want to 'manage' anybody. I want to be in a team where I'm a facilitator and advocate. If people need to be 'managed' that is a red flag to me, and it isn't worth the slightly better paycheck.
- jarofgreen 2y agoThis comment cuts straight to my immediate thought when reading - did they dig into the separate bits that people thought a managers job entailed, and which bits where appealing or not? Cos apparently* "double the amount (30%) would opt for a flat, team-based structure if given the choice" so team work is seen as important. So what functions would people like in a team? Mentors? Facilitators? Which of these might they actually want to do themselves if it wasn't seen as tainted by the phrase "middle management"? * I can't see any link to actual data or what questions were used, so we are all working of a thin PR statement which isn't the best.
- j45 2y agoThat's fine, just have to become better than being middle managers.`
- Seattle3503 2y agoThis requires age period cohort analysis. The article asserts cohort is responsible, but it is just as likely that gen z will age into an appetite for managing. Gen Z might just have a accurate self assessment of their management abilities.
- anovikov 2y agoIt's easy to see why. Middle managers are kicked around by so many forces outside of their control, are not respected by anyone anymore, and are badly underpaid. A half-decent engineer always makes more and does a lot more fulfilling work with a lot less bullshit factor in it.
- dboreham 2y agoDoes anyone want to be a middle manager?
- mensetmanusman 2y agoMiddle managers are information nodes for large scale human decision making mechanisms. If it were possible to interact individually with everyone in zero time, everyone could report to the king. Until then…
- theideaofcoffee 2y agoMy kingdom for a middle manager that was usefully connected to the organization like that and who could make information flow. I would love for the feeling of information coming to me through someone like that. Alas, that has -never- been my experience in organizations huge and tiny. It’s always through side channels. Always always always. Maybe it’s me, maybe it’s my bad luck, maybe lots of things, but the only thing a middle manager has been there for was to push paper up to the equally clueless layer above them and actively interfere in good work getting done.
- DidYaWipe 2y agoStop using these idiotic labels.
- retrofrost 2y agoI think the biggest systemic issue with middle management is that its mostly a political position that comes with political challenges. Middle managers have to be the political interfaces that try to implement and affect policy given to them by upper management, all the while giving feedback on said policy from the line workers to upper management. Good middle managers can really shield good workers from a lot of upper management idiocy. Bad middle managers exacerbate those issues. Its a thankless position that can really make things better, but often is stuck doing a mediocre job due to lack of training and bad circumstances.
- xivzgrev 2y agoThe youngest working generation doesn’t see the value of middle managers. Imagine that. Experience is a wise teacher.
- johngossman 2y agoThis is an ad for a company trying to sell their career advice services.
- nirav72 2y agoThe oldest Gen-z is still in their late 20s or early 30s. Could be that could change in about 10 years?
- jimsimmons 2y ago"it is never too late to start a career in middle management" goes the old joke
- nurettin 2y agoWhen political polls are split 50/50, it is a point of contention. When genz answers a yes/no question with a slight bias towards yes, it is decisively against middle management.
- SebFender 2y agoOutside of the article style and comments - middle management is basically a sink hole that if you don't get out fast - you get stuck.