My first reaction was to disagree, but then I tried to remember the embodiment of 'not-ideal' manager and, in my mind at least, they are basically everything I am not, or at least not want to be.
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 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 can feel this. At this point in my career, “who will my manager be” is essentially the #1 question I ask when considering any new project/team/etc. As is seemingly obvious from the comments on this post, the divide in experience between “horrible manager”, “meh manager”, and “good manager” is huge.
I think I would be an amazing employee. After managing several people in a startup I can really empathize for what it takes to be a good manager.
I now believe that bad managers aren't bad because they are bad people, they just lack the right experience. I'm more inclined to give bad managers a break and good managers unwavering loyalty.
Of course I can be projecting, since I'm still running my own business.
I've never had a "terrifying" manager or even a particularly bad one, but my personality type is such that I would worry about these things and dream up possibilities. It's likely that many other people have a similar personality type, based on the comments here.
I've fallen back in to "I've had bad managers" but do wonder how often I was the "bad managee". I know it was true in a couple of cases that were obvious to me. And... I can usually point the finger to "bad manager" when multiple folks in a group all had similar (bad) experiences. In other cases, it's not always so clear.
I had what I thought was a bad manager once. Problem was, I thought he was bad, everybody else thought he was great. It's not easy to say who is right/wrong in these situations.
But sadly accurate if you've never worked with a good manager. Good managers are rare, and people who have never worked with one err on the side of assuming all managers are pointless wastes of space.
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