[sowbug]

Sounds like the expression rubs you the wrong way.

How about this instead: a manager is a representative of a team, and vice-versa. Not every senior leader in a company has time to get to know and evaluate every individual member of every team; instead, they evaluate a manager as a proxy for the whole team. You, as a team member, will be evaluated through your manager. It's up to you whether that evaluation is positive.

"Make your boss a hero" isn't a very endearing way to phrase it, but it's a concise way to say that in a traditional corporate hierarchy, your fate is aligned with your boss's fate.

[internet555]

Idk, on the job I was in at that point I worked my specified amount and then worked on developing my skills and education outside work. I watched as my boss’ project floundered, he ran out of budget for contractors, employees who were less weak started leaving and their positions not filled. As my boss started trying to tell me I needed to fulfill more of a “leadership role” I could tell he was trying to pass off a terrible project to me so I demurred. Anyway, I got laid off, got a big severance, got to continue educating and doing things like that while collecting unemployment as I applied for jobs after, and ended up getting basically a position at more or less my dream lab.

I understand it’s different if you’re older with kids and a mortgage or lot of health bills or whatever but I haven’t really felt like my fate has ever been tied to any of my employees.

I feel like it’s just headgames for your manager to try and convince you that making him look good is essential to your career.

Edit: in case this is relevant the shitty project was actually the best project in our department as far as I was concerned before my former manager ran it into the ground by trying to look good by promising dozens of features for people who didn’t use it instead of building something that worked and was extensible

[walterbell]

> in a traditional corporate hierarchy, your fate is aligned with your boss's fate

And as a company owner, your fate is aligned with your customers' and investors' fate.

Hence the importance of sales, marketing and investor relations, i.e. managing OUTwards and UPwards.