> Additionally, it's typically a position with more responsibility as well as accountability which tends to reflect in higher pay.
Who has more responsibility for cooking your burger correctly, the cook or the manager? Who has more responsibility for measuring before cutting, the carpenter or the architect? Who has more responsibility for not leaving PII all over service logs, you or your team leader? I would politely suggest that there are different responsibilities for managers, but not that this somehow removes responsibilities from laborers.
> It's unfair to say managers work less because they do management tasks rather than the work their subordinates do. In virtually every job I've had, the more senior the manager, the more hours they worked. Retail especially.
My former CEOs have had enough spare time to show up in the tabloids because they can't stop having sex with their employees or making questionable business decisions with authoritarian governments. I don't have time for sex with my coworkers. Perhaps team leaders or low-level managers have to put in hours, but administrative management definitely does not.
> They don't just claim their positions optimize labour, it actually does optimize it.
In my lifetime, Linux was born and became not just a serious competitor to proprietary kernels, but supplanted them. Thus, the FLOSS model of a massive global commune of public-domain information and tools is a viable contender, able to compete with any corporation.
When I contributed to Linux, I reported to one of the subsystem lieutenants, and my code was reviewed by them and other contributors to the subsystem. For no money whatsoever, they advised me on which parts of the subsystem were worth contributing to, which outstanding tasks were too hard to tackle, and which documentation to read.
Also in my lifetime, Wikipedia was born, supplanting many proprietary encyclopedias within only a few years, and today it is another shining example of the triumph of the FLOSS model.
When I contributed to Wikipedia, I just did whatever I wanted. Whenever something looked like it could be improved, and I had the time and energy to improve it, I did what had to be done to make things better. If people disagreed, they could undo what I did; if I disagreed with them, then there were community arbiters who could negotiate a solution.
So, like, do managers actually optimize labor to the point where they earn their keep? I can't tell, and I think that we ought to measure.
> I don't understand where this idea that managers are merely irrelevant middlemen who have no impact on the people they manage comes from.
Oh, it's worse than that; the typical manager has a net negative impact on their direct reports, from what I've seen.
> And, as with almost any other job, a manager that fails to contribute will be replaced much like any other underperforming employee.
I no longer believe that you have been gainfully employed in a corporate hierarchy. This line gave you away.