I used to never want to be a manager. Now I'd rather be a manager than have someone incompetent and new tell me what to do. I think this is a common trope.
I managed several people for few years. I knew the ends and outs of everything. I can tell them what to do and how to do it. I preferred to let them do it on their own and be there to help them when they fail. No one ever came to me for help without getting the help they needed. My team told me I was the best manager in the world. But I wasn't happy being a manager. It was boring. I required me checking on them often. I loved my work, it bothered me to watch people struggling to work in job they didn't like. I wanted to do the work. No one could do it as good as me. I didn't want to get bogged down with administrative tasks. On top of that, I didn't have the authority to make decisions even as a manager. I was basically a baby sitter for people that didn't need baby sitter. So I let go of my manager position and I am happy. I knew some people could do better but I can't make them do it. I want them to do it without me asking. Just as I do.
Reading that article really makes me never want to go back to being a manager. It was almost everything I disliked and found stressful about the job. That I don't really understand why others find being a manager appealing is probably the best sign that it's not for me.
I agree with the title but more of a case that the alternative is having people who desperately just want to manage who usually make the worst managers.
I didn't want to be in charge. I didn't want to be the boss. I didn't want to 'make hard decisions'. I love the front-line work.
But I also hate, hate, HATE being told what to do. I hated having shitty managers who had no idea what life was like for me, professionally or personally. I hated getting mandates from the company with no context.
So, the only way I saw to fix that for myself, and the people I work with, was to be the guy in charge.
I hope that clarifies. Because, I'm 100% with you. The worst managers I've ever had have been the people who absolutely, no question, wanted to be nothing but a manager for the title or responsibility and ability to be in charge.
This is just my own personal opinion based on what i've seen but, some people should be managers, they enjoy it, they're great at it, it's their career path. Some people shouldn't be managers, no matter how good they are at something, it bores them, they don't like directing and organizing people, they like working on direct specific problems, they are actually really good at whatever skill it is they're being considered as manager for.
Some anectdota, a friend of mine, was really good.at.their job, they'd worked hard for the better part of a decade, trained some good people and grew the company, took a role as manager while his trainees took on his old duties. His job became pretty easy, his employees were good and didn't need much management, the rest of what he needed to do was pretty simple by comparison, his job came with a pay rise, but, he became fucking miserable.
He didn't get to work on the day to day things any more, when problem did occur, he couldn't really get his hands dirty, he'd delegate and the problem would get solved. Though, when something did actually go wrong, he was responsible, when there were complaints by employees, disputes and other things, he ended up dealing with them and he hated it.
Contrast that with another friend, he was good at his job, but didn't really care that much about specifics, tended to already be the kind of person who would delegate or organize, always the party host or the event organizer kind of person, also got promoted to a management position and couldn't be happier. He's the kind of person who'd always talk about the results of things, would brag about group achievements like personal achievements, and generally always cared more about end results than processes and from what I know, is a pretty damn good manager and is happy with their career path.
My first friend though recently had the opportunity to go back to a more technical role and has been a fair bit happier since.
I spent about 6 months in management and it was the worst experience in my career. I will never do that again. I'm back to writing code. I don't know why anyone would want to be a manager.
The worst thing is that I never wanted to be a manager but somehow always got pushed that way by the higher ups. I blame my background as evangelist being able to explain technical things to management. Ugh.
The problem that seems to expose to me, is why do we have so many (shitty) managers. Are managers just prone to be shitty?
Part of me thinks so. I think if you renamed every managers title to other titles like “clerk” and “facilitator” and basically reset what it means to be a manager, it feels like things would be different. At least for a while.
But then my theories swing back the other way. I have observed that many of my peers want to be “managed.” What they like about the arrangement is the feeling of isolated from responsibility and liability. Do as told. It’s sort of an “anti self reliance” thing. An attempt to be, as an adult, in a relationship that looks more like a subservient child-parent relationship.
After looking at my current manager and previous managers in my previous jobs I decided to never become a manager.
Being a manager means that I'll have to fill my day with nothing but meetings I cannot skip, keep talking on and on and on, deal with delivery headaches, respond to requests even while on PTO, do a lot of context switching between Slack, email, calendar, documentation, and other things. I used to like that level of being "busy" but now it seems that having my focus time is the best thing ever.
As a former manager I always read these management failures and wonder how on earth these people ended up in their positions. To be fair, I hated being a manager but I enjoyed having a happy, confident and competent team. So maybe the job just attracts people who love drama.
I sometimes think it’s because of the Dunning Kruger effect - that the people with the least amount of knowledge/skills just have an overconfidence about themselves - and overconfidence is something a lot of managers seem to have.
In contrast, a lot of the people I think would actually be good managers don’t want to be managers because they either don’t think they would do it well, or they just can’t be bothered with the shit that comes with being a manager.
I think it’s going to always keep being like this. The people that would be good to have in charge do not actually want to be in charge because being a manager sucks for them.
The main reason I took my first management position was after I remembered the pain of refusing a previous offer and getting an awful manager to lead the team.
Though I do not think I'm very good at managing myself. Though I might be an OK leader.
I agree. Early in my career, I thought a manager was like a driving teacher, someone to help guide you and hit the brake when you're about to crash. Now that I'm a manager, I think of it more like being a snowplow; you wake up in the morning and you can get your job done thanks to the work that someone else is doing behind the scenes.
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