The truth about being a manager

> You really do ruminate and worry about a lot, much of it outside of your control.

I believe that comes down to temperament, though being on either extreme end of that spectrum leads to problems.

middle managers only exist because c suite has no idea/dont care what their employees actually need so there has to be someone in the middle to water down their awful plans. its a hard job nobody should have to take on.

the worst part is when someone is forced to be a bad boss from above when they really dont want to do that so they become hated from both sides. nobody sane can work in that environment and not give up after a few years. i guess thats why so many psychopaths end up as managers when all the normal people burn out and quit. they like watching others suffer.

in a perfect world it would all be independent teams with the leader role rotating between members. the problem with that is teams have to agree on things and thats hard when everyone wants the most for themselves. it can only work if everyone wants the company to succeed and that can only happen if they feel like they have real power. basically what im saying is the only type of org that can work without traditional management is a co-op and our economic system is built to make that as hard as possible. respect to everyone stuck in the middle.

Mostly agree with this article. When I mentor people about managing, some other bits I also usually mention:

1. 'You’re not “part of the team” anymore.' - You're not part of the software dev team, but if you're doing things right, you're part of a team, just a new one. I encourage manager mentees of mine to read a book "Five Dysfunctions of a Team" which talks about figuring out who your "first team" is. Even in environments where you manage an autonomous team, you likely are working alongside other teams towards some bigger goal. Some of the things that worked being part of a software development team continue to work in the new setting, but you also need a new set of tools.

2. It's a two-way door. I've bounced back and forth between IC and manager roles. Some of it is just how the job market is (you look for a job, there aren't manager jobs, you go back to being an IC). Sometimes, people do it intentionally because they like being an IC. It's ok to try out being a manager, and realizing you don't like it.

A lot of what's here isn't specific to managing, and if you advance in your career as an IC, you'll experience similar.

It really depends on how large the company is. But small, independent teams are exactly how high-stakes teams work (e.g,. special forces groups). But it demands a level of buy-in and commitment that most people simply won't have towards their job. Even so, there's a level of "middle-management" that has to exist when an organization gets to a certain size. Most generals cannot realistically think at the level of an individual firefight, but a fireteam leader absolutely MUST think about success at the firefight level. However, a single fire team cannot win a war, so the generals must exist to consider the 30,000 foot view of success.

It's a difficult, though IMO noble, thing to try to build a workplace that is actually suited for this style of work. But the vision of the company: what are they trying to build, how world-changing is their vision, etc.—those things impact whether or not it's even feasible to get rid of middle-management.

As a final point, I've met many brilliant engineers who are simply not capable of being put in front of a customer. They either didn't care or weren't capable of communicating in the necessary way to correctly move the needle. That doesn't mean we toss them out, it means we put a layer between them: middle management.

Back in Soviet times there was a trend in Sci-Fi depicting the bright communist future when people changed professions every few years or so, often between manual and intellectual, to stay sharp.