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Comment by moneycantbuy | Hacker News Reader

firing entire levels of middle management seems to be a fashion these days, but from experience in my org it has been counterproductive. my current manager now has >60 direct reports so can’t even find the time to handle each of our basic hr tasks, let alone provide any leadership.

in theory i can see the board salivating to pretend they are elon but in practice it’s a dysfunctional nightmare.

plus it’s bad for ic morale because there is now no path forward for advancing our careers to the managerial level.

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Nothing new. Middle managers are the traditional food for layoffs. Have been, for decades.

For me, I was a "first line" manager of a small, rather high-functioning team, for 25 years.

I was quite capable of going up the food chain, but didn't want to. I liked getting my hands dirty, and being directly connected to the product.

I was a really good manager. I took the job seriously, and did well for the company (see "25 years," above). It was a Japanese company, and it's pretty tough to keep Japanese managers happy.

I also hated being a manager. When I left the company, and got to do my own gig, I ran back to IC status, as fast as my little legs could go.

if you hated it, how and why did you stay for 25 years? i’m at 7 years as an ic at a fortune 500 co and want out. ideally i’d start my own co without taking vc money, but so far i’ve been too afraid of the risk.

Mostly personal integrity. I know most folks think I’m a chump, but it was the path I chose.

We did good work. It didn’t really have a high profile, but it was really engaging.

Basically, I couldn’t trust anyone else to do the job, and the Japanese had a lot of trust for me.

It is a bit sad, to hear the name-calling and insults, when I talk about it, but I’m not an idiot, and I’m not a chump.

i don’t think you’re an idiot, nor a chump. just was wondering how you summoned the strength to persevere even though you didn’t like managing. maybe it’s a generational thing, my parents stayed at the same place for their whole career, but these days we’re expected to jump ship every few years if we want a raise that matches inflation.

Software/tech folks have it better than almost anyone else.

We usually get to love our job. We get paid quite well, and work on things that energize and motivate us.

The vast majority of the working population work at jobs that don’t really motivate them. Sometimes, they make a lot of money, but the work is a grind.

Many times, folks work at jobs for the social responsibility of doing stuff. They don’t like what they do, may not get paid that well, but feel like they are stepping up to the plate, and doing their civic duty.

This is a real rabbithole, and there’s a ton of opinions. Also, many managers are, shall we say, less than effective, so if we get a good manager, we should treasure them. A good manager can make difficult jobs bearable, and sometimes even highly motivating.

yeah i loved my first few years at big co which in hindsight was because of my manager. he hired me out of college and somehow brought the best out of me, resulting in many patents, publications, and a huge budget that rewarded our success. then the csuite turned over and my great manager was let go. now i’ve had 3 since and they’ve been progressively worse if measured by team output. so it goes

> plus it’s bad for ic morale because there is now no path forward for advancing our careers to the managerial level.

Why would one want to advance to a level that gets very rapidly shafted as soon as the s*it hits the fan? Just increase the programmers' comps to the same level of the managers' comps, if that low morale is actually about the money, and you've already solved half of the problem.

It's a big mess, for sure. I'm currently trying to interview as many of those managers with>10+ direct reports as possible to see what their biggest pain point is with staying on top of it. If you're one of them, ping me (https://www.linkedin.com/in/sascha-manuel-reuter-3177752b), and let's see how we can ease the pain for you and your directs.

Managers were rarely any good at leadership anyway. And not everyone can become managers so what's the real difference between then versus now?

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