[wiz21c]

Management is about having authority. That is, you're a vector: you must defend the company's values (which you may disagree with) in front of your team (which may disagree with them too).

So you'd better be very aligned on those values to be happy in the job.

(for example, when I was a manager, my manager's goal was to "show the rest of the company we can make websites much faster", which meant putting pressure on everyone. I disagreed with that, making things faster just to "show it can be done" at a very high human price, didn't look like a good idea. So I suffered.)

[pyrale]

Defending the company's goals is not necessarily an adversarial thing. Many teams have a very local observable area, and giving them context for the company's decisions and facilitating their alignment to these decisions, if well done, is enough. Not every company has a sketchy business model or anti-social ethics (hello Google), so in many companies, alignment issues are not quintessential, and solving them can be done pacifically.

In other words, sure, management is about authority, but there are many things from which authority can be derived: the authority of a respected teacher is very different from the authority of a coercitive cop.

Also, from a sociologic perspective, values are an outcome. If someone has to defend "the company's values", that means they are wishes, not values.

[RugnirViking]

That sounds like a terrible attitude. Management is about providing value to the company, and usually the best way to do that is by shielding your team from the worst of what's coming down by being an advocate for your team and what they do, and communicating the real situation as well as possible. You work with adults, if they know what they are doing and why they will prioritize well

[wiz21c]

I think I was overwhelmed with pressure. Actually, the team was also overwhelmed (a few people went away).

In the beginning of the project, I tried reorganize things, etc. And it went well for a month then pressure from the customer mounted again. And although I explained that things would be more expensive than planned, nobody wanted to listen. And ultimately, nobody stepped up to say "it won't work as expected", all the eyeballs were looking at me to say it. Which was difficult for me.

I should have realized that my boss was wrong and that I had to reach for help to someone else. I think I was too inexperienced to understand that soon enough.

[DuctTapeAI]

I work in a small company, but I've found that when I'm uncomfortable supporting one of the companies values to my direct reports that is powerful fuel to push the c-suite to change things. Of course, it took a lot of building trust to get there, and it is important to have some core of truly shared values, but I've found that work has payed off.

[resolutebat]

Good management goes both ways: you need to defend your team, convince the higher-ups of its worth and ultimately help define those values.

Of course, it's always possible to end up with a boss who refuses to listen or just doesn't understand, and then you're in trouble.

[wiz21c]

I was with a boss who refused to listen, that's for sure. Not the whole company, just him. This ended in me burned out and him gotten fired (I think I have been the one too many).

Retrspectively, the guy created the conditions of a failing project and I was too unexperimented/weak to say "no" (it's pretty hard to say "we can't do it" when everythign around you ask for "we can do it"). Big lesson learned: have the courage to say no.

Fortunately, the company noticed and dropped in some additional management and the projcet went on. But it was too late for my health :-(

So, yeah, you can say it's nothing to do with company's core values but nevertheless, I got that feeling. And eventhough I may not be a great PM, I trust my feelings pretty much.