Hacker News Reader

Isn’t that the entire purpose of being a manager? If I were just going to repeat the company line and not advocate for my team then I might as well be a rock.

You can and should do both. What I wrote above is a job a manager has to do every now and then, not the fun part, but also hard to evade.

"I don't like it either. Here's what I'm doing to try to get them to change course. In the meantime, we need to do xyz, and I need you to do abc as part of that"

I have absolubtely had managers that did an excellent job of making us feel like we were in it together. In fact I'd say its one of the key skills of being a manager at all?

If it’s in your interest to lie you should probably get a job that doesn’t make you a shithead.