Ask HN: My manager is bad. Should I care?

When skip levels and skip skip levels and skip skip skip levels exist, it creates more and more distance between what the business wants and what the middle managers end up asking engineers to do. This is dysfunctional but still exists. The only way out of this is for the upper management to build direct rapport with engineers - which means they need to be directly invested in the success of certain projects, and let other projects fall into place on their own. Middle management overhead is a big problem for the top and the bottom.

"Failing to include you" is a perception. It may not be a failure. It may be intentional, either because you're technically good at your job but lack the soft skills that are also important. "Clear communication" isn't necessarily compassionate communication. It may also be unintentional, because the manager and director have other priorities, or see you as autonomous.

Bottom line, it's your responsibility to ask for what you need. Manage up.

Since this is a problem you can't really fix, the thing I would ask yourself is if it makes your day to day so miserable that you would rather quit your job. That's hard for me to give advice on because it's a personal call. I have had some bad bosses over the years and I just gritted my teeth and put up with it because the job had other redeeming qualities I liked. Maybe that's the case for you, maybe not, but it's worth thinking about.

Part of being a lead or even any kind of role is to be able to deal with people that absolutely suck at their job and in the end, still make people as satisfied as you humanly can with your performance in your role.

Just accept it and treat it as "ambiguity" and don't let this bring you down, otherwise if you keep thinking about it, you'll make the issue much bigger and that will prevent you from doing your main objective, which should be paying your bills and putting that time in, so eventually you move to a different company that you'll have similar issues, but hopefully you'll have a higher salary.

I do struggle with this some as well, but with more experience this has been affecting me less and less, to go up the ladder, you need to get comfortable with people that sucks or things that don't work right.

Just have a look at the top of the ladder, the Elon Musks, Bidens and Trumps... they are terrible at their jobs, being good has never been a pre-requisite, but the connections you have and how lucky you are. You weren't born rich so you'll work in the company of a son of an emerald miner owner, how do you deal with that? That's how you should behave.

Some people here might tell you to read a book or do this or do that, but it won't change the fact that your superior is bad, what you need is to work through those misconceptions like "meritocracy" that wolves teach to sheeps, there's no meritocracy at work, maybe only in the amount of hours you put in and how good you are perceived by your peers, but meritocracy alone won't take you to $200B networth.

Summing up: all companies suck and those hierarchy structures have the natural tendency of creating those issues, you need to remember you do this because you need money and accept that you can't fix everything, and focus on what you can actually make better, otherwise consider going back to IC where you don't need to wrestle with so much ambiguity and people.

What if you're both? This makes me feel self-conscious about being "nice" and toning it down.