[opportune]

You’re probably right in general. But I was lucky enough to have some great middle managers during COVID who definitely had their fingers on the pulse of what was going on, clearly communicated goals and strategy, actually understood how the sausage got made. I had some poor managers/middle managers too, but they tended to get managed out and their damage was minimized by communication routing around them.

Maybe I’m just personally unlucky to have had some especially weak ones that didn’t get managed out and that happened to coincide with hybrid work.