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It’s difficult to not feel empathy for people you have a relationship with. Even if a manager is incompetent, they will get the benefit of the doubt from vs a lowly engineer whom the Senior Manager does not have a personal relationship with.

There are very few Senior Managers who take the time to look beyond what’s immediately presented to them.

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So M2s+ are expected to have empathy for M1s, but M1s are not expected to have empathy for engineers. And, M2s+ having been M1s prior to being promoted, have to develop empathy when becoming M2s+.

Have I described correctly the situation?

Legend:

M2 - senior management, has other managers reporting to them

M1 - first layer of management, has workers / engineers as direct reports

I think both are expected to have empathy. It goes south when one of them doesn’t have empathy for their -1 because they get the benefit of the doubt from their +1 in general.

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