[tancop]

middle managers only exist because c suite has no idea/dont care what their employees actually need so there has to be someone in the middle to water down their awful plans. its a hard job nobody should have to take on.

the worst part is when someone is forced to be a bad boss from above when they really dont want to do that so they become hated from both sides. nobody sane can work in that environment and not give up after a few years. i guess thats why so many psychopaths end up as managers when all the normal people burn out and quit. they like watching others suffer.

in a perfect world it would all be independent teams with the leader role rotating between members. the problem with that is teams have to agree on things and thats hard when everyone wants the most for themselves. it can only work if everyone wants the company to succeed and that can only happen if they feel like they have real power. basically what im saying is the only type of org that can work without traditional management is a co-op and our economic system is built to make that as hard as possible. respect to everyone stuck in the middle.

[adamtaylor_13]

It really depends on how large the company is. But small, independent teams are exactly how high-stakes teams work (e.g,. special forces groups). But it demands a level of buy-in and commitment that most people simply won't have towards their job. Even so, there's a level of "middle-management" that has to exist when an organization gets to a certain size. Most generals cannot realistically think at the level of an individual firefight, but a fireteam leader absolutely MUST think about success at the firefight level. However, a single fire team cannot win a war, so the generals must exist to consider the 30,000 foot view of success.

It's a difficult, though IMO noble, thing to try to build a workplace that is actually suited for this style of work. But the vision of the company: what are they trying to build, how world-changing is their vision, etc.—those things impact whether or not it's even feasible to get rid of middle-management.

As a final point, I've met many brilliant engineers who are simply not capable of being put in front of a customer. They either didn't care or weren't capable of communicating in the necessary way to correctly move the needle. That doesn't mean we toss them out, it means we put a layer between them: middle management.

[aunty_helen]

I think you’re being very uncharitable and lacking in empathy. Senior management have much bigger issues to deal with that can sink a whole business. It’s so demanding it’s made into a full time role.

I would rather work for someone who has on their mind where the business is going to be 12 months from now rather than what story points are acceptable to bring into a sprint.