"Middle managers" are certainly needed as part of a corporate hierarchy. What is being exposed with WFH is -ineffective- managers.
Ineffective managers are at every level, including the C-suite. Middle managers just have a higher probability of being ineffective due to lack of experience/resources, so they get the headline.
>Middle managers just have a higher probability of being ineffective due to lack of experience/resources,
Actually, I think it's because they're more difficult to discover; Determining whether a middle manager's performance is good or not is a far less trivial task than determining whether a technical employee is producing value.
Middle managers are adequate by default. Individual contributors are not. If a middle manager does not obviously cause damage or liability, they are generally assumed to be "working". If they do not appear to be exceptional or effective, it's assumed that their role has not presented any chances to excel. They are protected partially by the empathy that other managers have for their position. Managers are rarely fired simply for not producing results, which is very much not the case for individual contributors.
The difficulty of weeding out ineffective middle managers means they will be present as a higher percentage of total manager head count than e.g. ineffective line managers.
I agree. Also, most companies need a lot fewer middle managers than they have. I picked a "management" path because promotions are easier. But I still do technical work - I write code, review code, create and review tech documents.
Successive teams I have managed liked it that their manager is "one of them". We dont have boring team meetings. All are technical except select 1-1s which are career conversations
Not really the entire hierarchical structures of corporations is actually highly inefficient it's something a lot of universities have been talking about for a while now. Which is ironic when you realize most universities are designed similar to churches with indentured servitude.
I can't think of a more useless profession than manager. Managers should not be paid because they don't do actual work and they don't know about the technology. They just squeeze all the joy out of work by commanding developers to do things they know will not work, and take away all intrinsic motivation. The accumulation of managers is a sign of a sick company. When engineers build things, out of an intrinsic interest in building stuff, they gain status as the company becomes more successful. This attracts people only interested in status that drag the company down. A top priority of tech companies as they scale should be to keep engineering in charge.
Actually lot of middle management jobs can be automated specially tasks allocation and tracking. It is not that difficult to imagine a system like that where these functions can be automated and this middle managers can be free to do more “valuable” tasks.
There is a "hollowing out" of middle management - not from Covid or work from home, but software. It's still eating the world. Accountancy, or rather bookkeeping went first in the 1960s with rooms of people pulling levers on adding machines to the first IBMs. And now the data that those pounds and pence proxied for is actually being sent up the chain aggregated and compounded into a single straight through connection from the coal face to the board room. As Larry Ellison said "if you don't design it, build it or sell it Inwill do everything I can to automate you"
This is pretty accurate as an observation I believe. "My" middle manager does a lot more and acts more like a PO/PM combination fixing things in a horizontally integrated manner, whereas most typical PO/PM roles do their PM/POeing in a vertically integrated manner, on a product/product team basis. He's very good at that and therefore far from feeling irrelevant. Instead, he's drowning in useful work.
I am not surprised. I don't know how this plays out across different cultures, regional or corporate. I only witnessed how it went in the circles I work in here in Europe. My impression is that the group of people that clearly reacted mostly negatively to the work-from-home-during-the-pandemic period were indeed middle-managers, lowly heads of units, project managers, and those that populate the middle ranks of organisations with funny and unclear job titles. Perhaps these people are by nature of the extroverted people-person type that need extra social interaction to feel good. Or perhaps they found that their need to control others was more difficult to satisfy at distance. In my country it was also discussed at a point that many people were confronted during the pandemic with the meaninglessness of their jobs. I really believe it can be the case for many people, and not not only those middle-managers with funny job titles.
That's interesting that you mention Project Managers, mainly because my experience has been just the opposite. We've been leaning much harder on those folks to manage the increased communication and coordination overhead that comes from WFH.
OK but the meaningless of a job is supposed to be compensated by a paycheck -- I don't mean that as some patronizing middle manager -- but rather I've done loads of jobs I thought were meaningless, but did them anyways, because I needed to pay my rent.
We can get a sense of how an IC’s productivity changed during lock down. But it’s harder to tell how the effectiveness of management or leadership might have changed over a one or two year period.
Side note, I don’t know if some of you have actually been key players in a large org without management, but I have, and it SUCKS. If you think random slack pings are bad, try random slack pings plus 5+ hours of meetings a day you need to decline, justify declining, communicate about async, just to have time to get your work done. It’s my experience that without management, top performers are easily looking at 80+ hour work weeks
When a middle manager is removed, all the communication goes to the most senior member of the team instead keeping that person from being able to actually get things done.
The middle manager's time is a lot less expensive in most cases.
Also, being a middle manager isn't much fun either. Basically all meetings and bullshit, and you get shit from people below you and above you. Upper management blames you for anything going wrong and workers blame you for, well, everything. You need to motivate, teach and provide resources while dealing with all the bullshit from above and a lack of resources.
But as you pointed out, it's necessary otherwise everyone has to deal with the bullshit.
I’m a middle manager at a company that is fully and completely embracing remote work, and I feel as needed as ever. It’s the bad middle managers who only know how to provide “value” by instilling fear and managing presence who should be afraid.
my middle manager at Apple Inc in California purposefully instilled distrust between members of his group. It gave him control and he would do it repeatedly over different situations. At the same time, there was this vague message that if you wrote patent applications, you could possibly maybe be promoted, with a bonus, but there was no time allocated to do that. 1990s
My manager has been great during covid. He immediately scheduled a daily group meeting for 30 minutes and it made me feel more involved with my staff group than ever. Because we're all so spread out so whenever I visited the HQ I only ever met a few of them.
But our org is so confusing that he has very little to do with my daily tasks, I have other types of managers for that.
I think they mean micromanagers. I thrived as a middle manager of a remote team that was always distributed across three time zones. I’m not a micromanager and I built my team with that in mind, so my focus was hiring, onboarding, long term planning, and mentorship.
Maybe there’s a two dimensional chart here, but my best managers have been leaders, in which case they became mentors, or they’ve been service oriented, in which case I and my peers were up-managing them. The ones who are trying to herd cats come off as shrill, and nobody respects them. Fears them maybe, but no respect.
Problem is that if you’re up-managing your boss, they aren’t up-managing their boss. I’m sure there’s a Law in there somewhere. The leader types tend to know what’s what and shield the team from bullshit so they can get busy making the boss look competent in every other area. You can talk your way out of a lot of stuff when people are happy with the rest of your results. Delay tactics if nothing else. Sorry we can’t work on bullshit #372 right now because we’re busy being awesome on feature #784. Come back in a month or two (then cross your fingers to see if they still remember or are focused on bullshit #381).
This is a bad title to an other unsurprising article.
Managers don't fear they will become irrelevant. It's bad managers who are having trouble figuring out how to manage without seeing people at their desk.
What's mind blowing to me is that despite two years of being forced to evaluate people by their impact rather than by their physical presence, so many managers still don't have a clue how to do this right.
Meanwhile, healthy remote teams are thriving, and competent middle managers there provide incredible value, from managing execution to keeping the social tissue of their teams together.
Middle management got obliterated in the recession in the 80’s. It’ll happen again in the next recession.
I often wonder at the parallels between military chain of command and civilian chain of command. Line managers and NCOs are down in the trenches, and most of them stay there. Everyone else is in an “up or out” situation. They are not stable titles and you’ll get burned if you aren’t incredibly lucky.
If you took a title for more pay, my advice is always to recall that it’s for more money but that money might go away. Save it. Spend it on incidentals. But don’t take out loans on it. In the next downturn you’ll be fucked. Spend like you are one job title behind where you currently are - so either don’t spend it, or keep climbing.
Not doing your job well if this is the case. Quality managers do everything `codezero` mentioned above (hiring, onboarding, long term planning, and mentorship) along with being a corporate therapist and much more.
A lazy manager looks like the ER where they only handle shit when people come to them with blood and guts, a quality manager is regularly assessing the daily/weekly situation and anticipating obstacles or implementing fixes so engineering can run an unimpeded race. They're essentially the emotional chaos buffer for engineering, the goal being engineers come to work and feel the autonomy, freedom, and energy to execute well.
It all depends on the role. My immediate manager is good ( and likely the best manager I had so far ).
But he actively cuts through red tape for us and deals with the usual corporate idiocy on our behalf. I actually declined a job offer partially because of him ( no friends at other place to vouch for the place ).
I don't know how much other managers do, but he does a lot. Not just for us, but for the company.
There are clear benefits to remote. Our company posted record profits, ICs report increased individual productivity, but we have to roll it back, because it is 'hard' on managers? Whatever happened to, 'git gud'?
Schmidt:
"I don’t know how you build great management [with remote work]. I honestly don’t," he said. And about half of managers, 51%, genuinely believe that their workers want to return to the office.
Wesman:
“Clearly, managers are struggling,” said Max Wesman, GoodHire’s chief operating officer. “Organizations that find a work arrangement that satisfies the majority of their workforce will benefit in the areas of recruitment, productivity, employee satisfaction, and retention.”
I can think of a route towards Wesman's stated goal: if you fire most of the worthless middle managers, and let the real workers work from home, then a majority of the workforce will be satisfied.
Sorry but global remote work didn’t need to prove the Dilbert principle and Gervais rule. I’m willing to bet more people will leave jobs purely because they feel stuck behind an incompetent manager. Who wants to waste years of their life not growing?
ICs have virtually the most power in most companies at higher levels of seniority. The demand demonstrates that, but more importantly, more people should stand up for themselves when they have a shitty manager. Life isn’t long enough to be a doormat.
There are good managers out there. They are very rare. If you have one, keep them. If you don’t, look for one. Your mental health will thank you later.
> Eric Schmidt even recently weighed in about the return-to-work debate, [...] "I don’t know how you build great management [with remote work]. I honestly don’t," he said. And about half of managers, 51%, genuinely believe that their workers want to return to the office.
Instead of believing, perhaps ask them?
In general, I find this article to say almost nothing. The headline is the clickbait bringing in a Fortune of clicks, I'm sure.
Actual work like coding and drawing has become much easier with WfH. People work, like managing and coordinating, has become much harder now that you can’t just walk up to people and have conversations with them anymore.
If anything, middle managers are more important than that were before. I’m sure upper management will just see them as a cost-cutting measure though and write specious articles like this to justify their idiocy.
"If anything, middle managers are more important than that were before. I’m sure upper management will just see them as a cost-cutting measure though and write specious articles like this to justify their idiocy. "
I only disagree about one thing in that sentence. It is missing one qualifier. 'Good middle managers are more important than there were'.
"Fed-up managers declare WFH is over, as 77% say they’d fire you or cut your pay for not coming back to the office"
And the reasons the article describes are more along the lines of managers feeling that they cannot manage remotely, not worrying about their relevance.
The underlying reason might of course be worries about relevance, but that is not the content of the article.
I think it is worries about job-security. If everyone is remote every worker can be replaced by someone cheaper from some region with lower wages. As mangers are at the same location as their underlings, their relevance vanishes with local workers.
Companies that doesn’t offer flexible WFH will be less competitive in the jobs market. In other words, companies that force everybody to be in the office 5 days a week will end up with developers that can’t get jobs anywhere else.
The title in the <title> and <h1> tags on the actual article are also very different. I think they are playing some optimization game to get more people to click. It's possible that the HN title was once the title of the actual article.
As an IC, having an immediate manager that coordinates what my team works on and shields us from getting whipsawed by ad-hoc requests is really valuable, remote work or not. I may be a little biased, because all of my managers so far have been very technically competent. But having somebody above me who is both politically and technically savvy is a godsend. During times when my team has had no manager, everything was more chaotic and nothing went as smoothly.
That's awesome! As an IC, I have a supportive manager but a lot of ad-hoc requests are just taken on, some of them don't make sense, and then I have to push back. When I push back, my manager supports me but a lot of time is wasted in meetings and slack messages to keep protecting my time to do actual work.
On the positive side, I'm not a confrontational/assertive person. So, I had to learn how to say no and to articulate well why I push back.
My company (an F500) has made the inverse process: before COVID-19 there was just 2 levels of management between me and the C-level executive. Now I have 4 level of management.
I don't think it's bad to have middle management, if they cover you from the shit coming from the top. If they don't, they are just unuseful.
Most of middle management work is being pushed onto employees, who can now absorb that work because remote work has led to everyone working 2-3 hrs extra.
In the past if upper management wanted a demo of what was coming up, the “middle manager” would put it together, especially if it involves several team members’ work.
Now, with the fact that everyone is putting in more time, and that we are now all accustomed to spending hours and hours in meetings, they just throw an hour long meeting in the calendar, and ask the 10 people on the team to each do a 10 min demo.
Far more inefficient, but that’s ok because upper management is getting it for free.
I truly believe that I can predict how effective/productive an organisation is based purely on the non-manager to manager ratio. The higher the ratio, the more effective/productive the organisation is. This has been the case for every organisation I have ever worked for and read about. Don’t get me wrong. You do need a minimum of management to glue the organisation together. But anything beyond the absolute minimum will rapidly decrease the effectiveness/productivity of the organisation. The most efficient/productive/successful company I have worked for had a ratio of 20 to 1. The worst/most inefficient company I have ever worked for had a ratio of 2 to 1 (I kid you not).
Really there are just too many managers doing too little work. They seem busy because they're in meetings 40 hours a week. 40 emails would be about as productive, and free up half their week (so they could do twice as much, hence we would need half as many).
[+] [-] mvkel|4 years ago|reply
Ineffective managers are at every level, including the C-suite. Middle managers just have a higher probability of being ineffective due to lack of experience/resources, so they get the headline.
[+] [-] Accujack|4 years ago|reply
Actually, I think it's because they're more difficult to discover; Determining whether a middle manager's performance is good or not is a far less trivial task than determining whether a technical employee is producing value.
Middle managers are adequate by default. Individual contributors are not. If a middle manager does not obviously cause damage or liability, they are generally assumed to be "working". If they do not appear to be exceptional or effective, it's assumed that their role has not presented any chances to excel. They are protected partially by the empathy that other managers have for their position. Managers are rarely fired simply for not producing results, which is very much not the case for individual contributors.
The difficulty of weeding out ineffective middle managers means they will be present as a higher percentage of total manager head count than e.g. ineffective line managers.
[+] [-] perfopt|4 years ago|reply
Successive teams I have managed liked it that their manager is "one of them". We dont have boring team meetings. All are technical except select 1-1s which are career conversations
[+] [-] yike321123|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stjohnswarts|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jurschreuder|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] newsclues|4 years ago|reply
Technology has made it possible to be a more effective manager and leader.
[+] [-] la6472|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ozfive|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lifeisstillgood|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 2ion|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] VariableStar|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bonecrusher2102|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hungryforcodes|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ip26|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trentgreene|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brightball|4 years ago|reply
The middle manager's time is a lot less expensive in most cases.
[+] [-] Mikeb85|4 years ago|reply
But as you pointed out, it's necessary otherwise everyone has to deal with the bullshit.
[+] [-] kbos87|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bb88|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mistrial9|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] INTPenis|4 years ago|reply
But our org is so confusing that he has very little to do with my daily tasks, I have other types of managers for that.
[+] [-] deltaonefour|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codezero|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hinkley|4 years ago|reply
Problem is that if you’re up-managing your boss, they aren’t up-managing their boss. I’m sure there’s a Law in there somewhere. The leader types tend to know what’s what and shield the team from bullshit so they can get busy making the boss look competent in every other area. You can talk your way out of a lot of stuff when people are happy with the rest of your results. Delay tactics if nothing else. Sorry we can’t work on bullshit #372 right now because we’re busy being awesome on feature #784. Come back in a month or two (then cross your fingers to see if they still remember or are focused on bullshit #381).
[+] [-] algo_trader|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] khazhoux|4 years ago|reply
I’ve never in 20+ years seen a micromanager in the wild. I’m not sure they really exist.
[+] [-] insulfrable|4 years ago|reply
Managers don't fear they will become irrelevant. It's bad managers who are having trouble figuring out how to manage without seeing people at their desk.
What's mind blowing to me is that despite two years of being forced to evaluate people by their impact rather than by their physical presence, so many managers still don't have a clue how to do this right.
Meanwhile, healthy remote teams are thriving, and competent middle managers there provide incredible value, from managing execution to keeping the social tissue of their teams together.
[+] [-] hinkley|4 years ago|reply
I often wonder at the parallels between military chain of command and civilian chain of command. Line managers and NCOs are down in the trenches, and most of them stay there. Everyone else is in an “up or out” situation. They are not stable titles and you’ll get burned if you aren’t incredibly lucky.
If you took a title for more pay, my advice is always to recall that it’s for more money but that money might go away. Save it. Spend it on incidentals. But don’t take out loans on it. In the next downturn you’ll be fucked. Spend like you are one job title behind where you currently are - so either don’t spend it, or keep climbing.
[+] [-] mountainriver|4 years ago|reply
The best teams I’ve worked for were more self organizing. When you have great engineers this is very effective and a wonderful work environment.
[+] [-] dQw4w9WgXcQ|4 years ago|reply
Not doing your job well if this is the case. Quality managers do everything `codezero` mentioned above (hiring, onboarding, long term planning, and mentorship) along with being a corporate therapist and much more.
A lazy manager looks like the ER where they only handle shit when people come to them with blood and guts, a quality manager is regularly assessing the daily/weekly situation and anticipating obstacles or implementing fixes so engineering can run an unimpeded race. They're essentially the emotional chaos buffer for engineering, the goal being engineers come to work and feel the autonomy, freedom, and energy to execute well.
[+] [-] A4ET8a8uTh0|4 years ago|reply
But he actively cuts through red tape for us and deals with the usual corporate idiocy on our behalf. I actually declined a job offer partially because of him ( no friends at other place to vouch for the place ).
I don't know how much other managers do, but he does a lot. Not just for us, but for the company.
[+] [-] rowanajmarshall|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] A4ET8a8uTh0|4 years ago|reply
There are clear benefits to remote. Our company posted record profits, ICs report increased individual productivity, but we have to roll it back, because it is 'hard' on managers? Whatever happened to, 'git gud'?
Schmidt:
"I don’t know how you build great management [with remote work]. I honestly don’t," he said. And about half of managers, 51%, genuinely believe that their workers want to return to the office.
Wesman:
“Clearly, managers are struggling,” said Max Wesman, GoodHire’s chief operating officer. “Organizations that find a work arrangement that satisfies the majority of their workforce will benefit in the areas of recruitment, productivity, employee satisfaction, and retention.”
[+] [-] Bud|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thenerdhead|4 years ago|reply
ICs have virtually the most power in most companies at higher levels of seniority. The demand demonstrates that, but more importantly, more people should stand up for themselves when they have a shitty manager. Life isn’t long enough to be a doormat.
There are good managers out there. They are very rare. If you have one, keep them. If you don’t, look for one. Your mental health will thank you later.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilbert_principle
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...
[+] [-] 2ion|4 years ago|reply
Instead of believing, perhaps ask them?
In general, I find this article to say almost nothing. The headline is the clickbait bringing in a Fortune of clicks, I'm sure.
[+] [-] jimbob45|4 years ago|reply
If anything, middle managers are more important than that were before. I’m sure upper management will just see them as a cost-cutting measure though and write specious articles like this to justify their idiocy.
[+] [-] A4ET8a8uTh0|4 years ago|reply
I only disagree about one thing in that sentence. It is missing one qualifier. 'Good middle managers are more important than there were'.
[+] [-] someweirdperson|4 years ago|reply
"Fed-up managers declare WFH is over, as 77% say they’d fire you or cut your pay for not coming back to the office"
And the reasons the article describes are more along the lines of managers feeling that they cannot manage remotely, not worrying about their relevance.
The underlying reason might of course be worries about relevance, but that is not the content of the article.
I think it is worries about job-security. If everyone is remote every worker can be replaced by someone cheaper from some region with lower wages. As mangers are at the same location as their underlings, their relevance vanishes with local workers.
[+] [-] mbrodersen|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Bud|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jrockway|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] patrick451|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] galoisscobi|4 years ago|reply
On the positive side, I'm not a confrontational/assertive person. So, I had to learn how to say no and to articulate well why I push back.
[+] [-] lormayna|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thawaya3113|4 years ago|reply
In the past if upper management wanted a demo of what was coming up, the “middle manager” would put it together, especially if it involves several team members’ work.
Now, with the fact that everyone is putting in more time, and that we are now all accustomed to spending hours and hours in meetings, they just throw an hour long meeting in the calendar, and ask the 10 people on the team to each do a 10 min demo.
Far more inefficient, but that’s ok because upper management is getting it for free.
[+] [-] mbrodersen|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway93982|4 years ago|reply