[squnch]

Well you have to realize that most managers have no idea why they have it so good. When so many children are starving to death worldwide, why do they live in a 4 bedroom house with a pool? Do they have exceptional talent or intelligence? No. So they fundamentally operate from a place of fear. It’s like Twitter holding onto 140 characters forever — they had no idea why they were so successful, so their approach was “don’t touch it, you might break it.”

If you are a heart surgeon or Lebron James you can understand why you are making so much money — you have exceptional skill at something in high demand. The average manager is more like someone who found a bank error in their favor and prays every morning that it isn’t discovered.

[Non24Throw]

> If you are a heart surgeon or Lebron James you can understand why you are making so much money — you have exceptional skill at something in high demand.

No need to reach for an analogy here, you could just say “if you are an engineer.”

In my experience what you’re saying is rarely true at the top tech companies, the managers there generally either come from a tech background themselves or they show an unexpectedly strong understanding of technical aspects of the product anyway, and typically have strong organizational and people skills that clearly stand on their own as rare and valuable.

What you’re saying is almost always the case at small- to mid-size tech companies (which is most of them), and I think it’s because they’re perpetually unable to attract and retain top tech talent... so anybody that can code is de facto placed and kept in a role where they’re coding, and ideally only coding.

A side effect of that is the pool of candidates for promotions and managerial positions is reduced to “only people who can’t code.”

It creates this bizarre situation where the company is looking to its least talented people and least impressive outside candidates to fill the management positions, and actively trying not to promote or give any credit to its most impressive and productive people (because then they might realize their value and demand something the company can’t give them).

These are also the companies most likely to be running against deadlines and having people work evenings and weekends, because again, they can’t attract or retain enough talent to comfortably hit those deadlines. They’re always able to create those deadlines though, because as it turns out, it’s a lot easier to sell software than it is to make software.

Then at 5pm on Friday when all the engineers are looking forward to another 4 hours of coding, all the managers get to throw up their hands and go “I’m useless anyway, I guess I get to go home now!”

And they might as well.

(If you’re an engineer and this sounds familiar to you, go apply to 50 tech companies right now because you’re way more valuable than you realize)

[alexashka]

The difference in top companies is the people who got in, know they have it real good, because they specifically studied leetcode for 6 months to try and get in.

Average managers didn't and so they just derp around hoping everything'll turn out alright.

Everything else is the same.

[luckylion]

That sounds a bit dismissive. What if they realize "I'm not a super star, but I'm above average in these desired skills. Therefore I get a nice house, but no multi-acre villa like some NBA superstar".

I think you're adding a bit too much personal animosity towards management.

[codemac]

And I think you're giving management too much credit.

The vast majority of management does not have goals/behaviors they are measured in.

I'm still fascinated that it's largely considered impossible to have a VP count how many 1:1's a manager had or how many times they gave positive vs. negative feedback. Imagine if no one kept any statistics for any sports player, and just say "it's too hard, you have to manually count".

Most managers should be fired, they largely are flailing around underneath directors who should also be fired, underneath VPs who have so little control over their org they largely are future predictors with no inputs (aka random output).

I say this from a place of love - I think they're all working very hard. But I've only ever met 1 manager in my life that counted their small interactions with their reports to try and improve.

[luckylion]

I'm not giving management any credit, but I believe they have a pretty good idea why they are hired and paid well, and if it's just "because I've studied this and that, have those certifications and know how to use KPI in a sentence". I don't believe that managers by and large suffer from impostor syndrome and therefore try to gain control of their situation by adding surveillance because of fear.

They may have plenty of room for improvement, but their actions aren't motivated by "I don't know what I'm doing here", rather "I don't trust my employees enough to let them run free". That's a very different motivation and confusing the two will only lead to not understanding actions and reactions.

[codemac]

They don't trust their employees because they don't know what they're doing.

[squnch]

It's not just management... it's all white collar middle class workers in America. Why aren't they inhaling dust in a coal mine or dying of a preventable disease? None of us really have any idea.