The most difficult thing about working in the big tech is managers

The problem is...

Good managers are necessary.

However managers get judged weirdly. Because they can't point to what they did and say look at my work, it's excellent.

Good management is invisible. Things just work. It's smooth. Everyone gets stuff done. Bs doesn't happen.

So it creates this weird problem. A manager is valued based on the number of people under them. Meanwhile they need to quickly figure out who they can trust. And frankly this is a critical skill. A good manager can judge people quickly and figure out who is doing good work and who isn't and who can be trained up to be better. But good managers aren't a dime a dozzen. Just because you know the business well doesn't mean you can make a team effective.

And so the problem.

This is why the phrase goes... People come for the company and the money. People stay for the manager.

you say the good managers are necessary because you are limited by the data points we have today.

what prevents you from thinking that we can come up with a better people process and productivity technology that can improve workers productivity and mental health without the existence of the so-called "good managers"?

if you can't imagine an alternative, go back and read the paragraph about Lord Kelvin.

> what prevents you from thinking that we can come up with a better people process and productivity technology

Upper management, really.

I dislike bad management as much as the next guy, but bad management feels more like a symptom of a poorly run company. If the executive strategy insists on maximizing value and driving employees to the brink 24/7, then managers will make that happen. It's like the whole "good soldier" question; do they obey or do the right thing?

Most "good managers" that want to keep their job will act as interpreters for whatever their higher-ups tell them. C-suites barely know what they want, and engineers barely know what to do. Maybe I've been sold a bill of goods by my previous managers, but many of them have pulled their weight just fine.

we can come up with a better people process

Sounds like a manager’s job. Who are “we” exactly? I’m not a manager and I don’t want to deal with people processes.

I would assume leaders. Peers that think more horizontally and get (at least part of) their energy from helping others.

So, managers?

No, generally managers see themselves as “above” engineers and tend not to work as peers on the same projects. They (try to) manage rather than lead by example and practise.

So the issue isn't all managers but rather how few good managers there actually are.

I think companies don't know how to optimize for good management because, as the other person mentioned, good management can be invisible. The impact of good management often won't show up in one quarter of performance. And sometimes things have to get worse before they get better.

Also there are way too many incentives to promote ICs to managers who shouldn't be managers just because they need someone to manage a team and they don't have clear IC promotion tracks.

Adding on to your statement.

I think this is the crux of the problem. Organizing people efficiently is hard. And unfortunately the incentives for mangers are: the more people under you the more valuable you are. And you must hit goals because managers are directly judged based on team outcomes.

The problem is "turtles all the way down". Because of the above, often directors aren't amazing mentors. They just know how to push people into the right direction... Socialized bad guy if you will. So instead of managers getting solid mentorship, they are often thrust into a position of power and told to figure it out, well for many, as you see with how they raise children, figure it out = ruthless.

I have had a manager who ended up as a mentor/friend. That is because she always cared.

Your post goes from well thought out to annoying the minute you pivot to historical figures.

It started being silly when the bit about "taking credit for the work reports do" failed to mention that they ate also supposed to be accountable when the team fails.

Managers represent the objective realities of deadlines and needing to writesoftware that will increase profits of the company. A worklife without managers would be much less stressful, because it would be a life in wonderland, with no responsibilities and no pressure of the real world.

I've personally seen teams like that, in a company where managers were very weak and their graps on the teams was almost non-existant at times. Predictably, the developers spent their couple years of freedom producing some sophisticated technical wankery with marginal utility for the company that was paying their salaries. IOW, your typical developers cannot be trusted to be left unmanaged.

Ah, this rant again, from an early-career IC who’s likely done more I’ing than C’ing.

Cool. The idea that managers are just “cracking the whip” and “taking credit for your work” tells me you’ve had nearly zero real world experience (who’s teaching you things, who’s helping you develop, who’s making sure other teams know what you’re doing, who’s making sure that your work is in alignment with the rest of the org, etc etc etc), nearly zero interaction with anyone other than your peers, and have no idea what leadership does.

But go off comparing managers to monarchy, of all inane things. And that’s aside from suggesting that managers are responsible for your mental health issues. That’s low and childish.

Why can't managers come up with a better counterargument other than ad-hominem most of the times when their relevance is challenged - aww you've only had bad managers. you must be new grad to not understand the importance of managers.

No matter how much you like to justify the importance of your role, that doesn't change all the fundamental facts about your role.

Based on your tone and the way you drive the conversation, I wouldn't be surprised if you are one of those narcissistic managers who think they are people leaders and think you are doing something important, while your reports probably think you are just a useless middleman, but can't voice it because of the power you hold over their career - which is the unfortunate reality.

If you think managers are not the primary contributing factor to the mental health issues and the general unhappiness in the workplace, this goes to reinforce the argument that managers are generally tone-deaf. why else would engineers be unhappy unless they get interrupted by sporadic status update requests and their times wasted by useless scrum meetings and 1-1s that managers like you likely are drawn to.

No matter how highly you think of your role and how much you think your role is relevant, that doesn't change the fact that if your ICs leave the company, it's most likely going to be because of you.

Everything you listed can be done by TLs and can be absorbed by ICs in a holacratic model. if that's all you do, then you are indeed an overpaid useless status update tool bot & message filtering system at best, and a human scarecrow at worst. it's likely that the company can hire store managers from Target and with a little bit of ramp-up they can pretty much do everything your role entails - managing out, asking for status updates, hiring, and delegating scoping and mentoring work to the TLs, sitting in useless meetings all day (and calling it alignment, scoping, and fighting fires and shielding the ICs from politics to feel more relevant about yourself, not acknowledging that shit buffering and politicking exist because managers and modern corporate hierarchy exist)

no wonder more and more people are thinking managers are useless if this is the best argument you can come up with. I genuinely hope better people processes and collab tools will make your kind obsolete soon.

And with all these words you were not able to confirm or refute the hypothesis that you are still early in your career and still have a lot to learn. Or maybe you have confirmed it after all.

> Based on your tone and the way you drive the conversation, I wouldn't be surprised if you are one of those narcissistic managers who think they are people leaders and think you are doing something important, while your reports probably think you are just a useless middleman, but can't voice it because of the power you hold over their career - which is the unfortunate reality.

So, “you’re a shitty person and everyone hates you because you disagree with me”? And you wonder why you’re not being taken seriously?

> Everything you listed can be done by TLs and can be absorbed by ICs in a holacratic model

It absolutely cannot, but given that you haven’t articulated a single reason why you believe that’s true and have, instead, gone on another multi-line rant about how incompetent I must be, I don’t think you actually have any idea what you’re talking about.

In short, when all you’ve got is high-minded ideals and personal attacks, you might look in the mirror to discover the source of some of your frustration at work. It’s probably not your manager, no matter how stupid you think they are.

> So, “you’re a shitty person and everyone hates you because you disagree with me”? And you wonder why you’re not being taken seriously?"

you are the one who started the conversation with some childish remark like doing more I"ing then C"ing.now that I took the time out of my day to give you a thoughtful response, you now respond back with another ad-hominem. "and you wonder why you're not being taken seriously?" look at other comments buddy. there are quite a few people agreeing with the post. but if you are a typical line manager or a middle manager, then no wonder you are so blind and can't see it.

> It absolutely cannot ... In short, when all you’ve got is high-minded ideals and personal attacks

If everyone thought like you in the past, we would still be stuck in monarchy and slavery.

Slavery absolutely cannot be replaced. what our king does cannot absolutely be done by an alternative system. Man I can't imagine how human history would have turned out if we only had people like you who oppress and dismiss challenges to the status quo with "absolutely cannot" haha.

I feel bad for the people that have to report to you. all the more reason why I am hoping a better alternative system will come sooner to make your kind irrelevant asap.

People are hating on your thread, but I wholeheartedly agree with everything you said. Perhaps a bit intense, but it all matches my experience.

I wrote ad nauseam about this (see my comment history), but yeah, I am looking to retire asap from a tech career (hopefully before I turn 40), and the thing I look forward to the most is not having to deal with a manager ever again. I have had dozens of managers throughout my career: good ones, bad ones, technical, not technical, etc. I despised interacting with each one of them. At the end of the day, it is not in my personality to be managed.

Fortunately I’m paid very well and I am used to live extremely frugally, so I'm quickly racking up a few million dollars and then I’ll eject myself out of this crap.

I am still very much in love with tech, mind you, so I might pursue some sort of solo online business to keep my skills up, but never again I will want to be “managed”.

It started pretty well, but the paragraph where you're comparing managers to the monarchy and nobility (!) made me laugh. You're clearly confusing cause & effect, to the unbelievable levels.

Managers are hired by the corporate "monarchy & nobility" - founders, board, shareholders etc. And there are many valid reasons to do that - lack of technical skills, efficiency, even laziness (you pay money to someone else to care about something more important to yourself).

Fun fact is that all those groups on the top of the food chain are also managers, but in attempt to crash the feudalism you're targeting the powerless middleman.

IMHO first line managers should always be from within the team or work on some tickets for a while.

If first line managers do not know the trench, no way they are going to effectively manage.

Nice privilege to be able to say that money is just superficial.

You just dealt with bad managers. I could write the same rant about ICs, or about my plumber and whatnot.

did you read between the lines? you just threw one of the 101 responses that managers throw to defend their relevance as I pointed out.

All four responses you listed are valid imo. Is there a particular one you disagree with?

Take a look at worker cooperatives - Mondragon is a modern and relevant one.

Also, the Rochsdale principles and the group from which they came.

I hope we move towards this model in the future. Seems a lot more humane and just as effective.

FAANG exclusively hires low to midwit IQ managers. Just deal with it.