[rco8786]

> Sure it's a spectrum but half of that spectrum (from average to god awful) have power over your career/work, to your detrement.

It is always your responsibility to advocate for yourself, your career, and your work.

If you are an engineer you should view your manager as a marginal value add only. Some managers add more value to your career than others, for sure, but it's still marginal relative to the effect that YOU have on your career. If you find yourself on a team with a truly bad manager who is having a negative affect on your career, get out...but this is truly a rare occurrence in my experience.

[johnbellone]

If your manager is only adding a marginal value to your career it is time to have a conversation with them. A manager that isn't advocating for their team isn't a good manager at all. They're something else.

[rco8786]

A manager can only add marginal value to your career. ONLY.

You spend 40+ hours a week on you and your career. Your manager spends a small fraction of that directly on your career.

100% agree that they need to be advocating for you/your team, finding the right projects for you/your team, etc, etc. But at the end of the day your career is your responsibility, and it's only a fraction of your manager's responsibility.

[bumby]

I'm not sure I agree here, because the manager has the ability to impact all those other hours.

A good manager helps remove the hurdles that will make those 40+ hours immensely more productive. A bad manager adds to those hurdles, potentially whittling productive hours to nothing.

[pyrale]

> You spend 40+ hours a week on you and your career. Your manager spends a small fraction of that directly on your career.

If your manager has little more leverage than you do, that's true. In many orgs, managers have considerably more leverage than their reports, and their help is mandatory to get some things (promotions, pay increase, access to conferences and trainings, changing teams, passing messages up the chain or laterally, support for escalation, etc).

The only trump card the report has is leaving, but they pay for that by losing all the social capital acquired at the current company.

[osigurdson]

This view makes it seem that the manager is compensated directly by the team.