Why is Company Management Always Terrible? - How Money Works

In a recent study conducted by MIT American workers identified management and the culture they create as the reason they were looking for a different job ten times as frequently as workers who were looking for another job to get a pay increase.

Good managers do exists, but even if you are lucky enough to find one, they are often stuck dealing with poor management of their own that trickles down throughout an entire corporate structure.

In an age where staff turnover is costing businesses billions of dollars a year you might expect that companies would do their best to address this problem, but even companies like Google, and Apple that do their absolute best to create world leading working environments are still called out for toxic leadership.

It’s not just staff turnover either, management structures determine the direction of companies and it feels like every other week their poor performance is the reason behind a company going under.

So why do managers always suck? Well believe it or not science has the answer.

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Music by Epidemic Sound

Stock footage by Storyblocks

[kage-fm]

my favorite manager spent most of his time trying to shield me from the poor decisions of those above him.

[ericspencer]

In my experience, the biggest fail of management has been the seemingly built-in disconnect between them and operations. The higher up the ladder, the more removed management becomes from daily operations, resulting in a lack of knowledge/understanding of the how, when, why things function (or don't) by the very people making those decisions.

[greenfrog]

I'm an electrical engineer. Many moons ago I was asked by the General Manager to create the next generation product for our company. I said no, I can't do that, but I can get it done. He remarked that that might be better. I knew I was not the best engineer in the company, but I was very good at organizing work and getting the staff to do the right things at the right time. So I was put in charge, the team followed my direction, but I did NOT provide the design leadership, that was up to the lead designer. He was happy doing that and I was happy letting him do it. The number one management failure I have seen is the assumption that the person best at the technical aspects is also the best person to manage the work. Promoting the best engineer into management loses a great engineer and usually creates a lousy manager.

[RossSpeirs]

Managers are taught that they are more important for thinking about work than their subordinates are for doing work.

[drewpac]

One area to consider is that progression into management if often the only way to increase pay. So let’s say you’re a great lawyer, you want to get to partner. You need to manage. But, they are completely different skills.

Someone could be shit at law, but a great leader. And vice versa

[stephenchapel]

My observation after 65 years of blue color work is that most managers get their positions because of cronyism, nepotism or plagiarism.

[maxxon]

It's the trouble with the traditional career model.
To move up, eventually you need to move into a managerial position. You can't get a raise just getting better at what you currently do, for some reason...
So frequently this results in turning great salespersons into poor managers.

[davianoinglesias]

You left out office politics which is how most manager found themselves in those positions

[sharpsheep]

A simple solution is to have two tracks: management and technical. As long as pay and recognition is similar, skilled technical workers will not feel pressured to perform managerial duties simply to climb the ladder. Also, good managers who are not necessarily the SMEs can still manage and lead people.

[incurableromantic]

My experience of hiring and firing is that it almost entirely comes down to who you know. I have a friend who got catapulted into an *unbelievably* desirable position he was is NO way qualified for - because he was in a social club with the person doing the hiring. It wasn't even a club with anything to do with the industry in question.

Honestly it's why I wanted to strike out on my own, I *hate* schmoozing.

[mikedaniel]

You hit the nail on the head at 8:25 - the reason people want to become managers is because of prestige and compensation. If you accept that management is just another necessary job function, pay them the same as those they supervise. This keeps the sociopaths out because then the only incentive to become a manager would be because you LIKE IT.

[fillername]

In the military we used to say that shit floats when referencing the type of people that seem to rise to power.
Another friend pointed out that once a company gets bad leadership they always promote people who subconsciously they share a lot in common. This continues the poisoning of the management pool until it is so sick and toxic that the business is likely to die.
Bad middle managers and lower managers realize that if they promote the hardest most competent workers there will be none left to cover for their incompetence. So they must promote the lesser employees so that the work still gets done and the newly promoted are never a threat to their boss as they are also too incompetent to take their managers job from them.

[MiM-hhxz]

The problem I see is that a lot of poor managers are drawn to the position to boost a fragile ego. These people are generally insecure and see any opposing opinion as a threat. They're quite rigid and more likely to impose their ideas on those they manage which in turn leads to a pretty unmotivated and disconnected team.

[thecookiemeister]

Can confirm, a good manager can make or break a job. I worked at amazon as a lackey, just some dude shuffling boxes around on a graveyard shift. I still smiled when i walked in (most times) because my manager was a super cool and charismatic guy. When he got moved up and replaced by some weirdo, i dreaded work and soon shifted over to day shift, even for a paycut.

[IL_Bgentyl]

The issue I see is most management poorly conveys information. They play telephone and expect everyone to be on the same page. From my experience everyone from top to bottom should understand the overall goal and how their job fits into that to an extent.

[bizichyld]

I’ve been turning down offers for management positions at my company for 15 years. The difference in my company is that becoming a manager is the same job I have now, but with the added responsibility of hiring, firing, discipline, and generally being responsible for every problem (of which are always endless) for a few dollars an hour pay increase. I tell them I’ll do it for double my rate and that usually puts a quick end to the conversation.

However I am always a supervisor of other staff and I always follow a few rules. The first is that I never expect anyone to work harder than myself. Secondly, I will always defend those I supervise when treated unfairly or with disrespect.

[jontalbot]

What surprises me is that no one seems to think management education is at least partially responsible. The way it is taught- as if it were a science, in a classroom, is the root of the problem. We have not adapted our education system so that people learn and do at the same time. That is how apprenticeships have worked for centuries.

[Jakromha]

Another point is that most companies only have a top-down structure. People from the top choose who gets a promotion. A healthy system should have top-down and bottom-up elements, like a team chosing who becomes their leader.

[GeneralChangFromDanang]

I do mostly factory work and in every factory I've been at, management was completely detached from the shop floor. They all treat the workers like they have the plague or something. This leads to poor communication of goals or problems and in the end it limits progress.

[PhilfreezeCH]

I feel like we just need to treat management more like a regular job, same as a lawyer, engineer, doctor or whatever, and less like some ascendance into a class of nobility that justifies immense compensations and power.
People that aren‘t really good at managing other people would be way less inclined to take that management position if it didn‘t come with a pay increase. Which means it would be more likely that people who are good at it and enjoy it take those jobs.
There is just no good reason why a manager should earn more than a senior engineer or doctor and lower management should probably make less since it does require some innate skill (but most things do) but it doesn‘t necessarily require a lengthy education.

The only reason why manager make this amount of money at the moment is exactly because we essentially treat them like company-nobility. The manager of some production line is not just the guy with the job to organize and manage the people working on said line, instead he is THE MANAGER, lord of the workers, protector of production, next in line to the fiefdom of all production which in turn answers directly to the king of the company himself, which is given his mandate by the stockholder gods themself.


Edit: For roughly a year I have worked for a small-ish company (~300 workers) that had almost no management and instead it was worker-managed for most things. In practice this meant that every team (~5-10 people) had a team-leader that was chosen on a per-project basis, it was usually the most senior worker or the one with the most experience for that project, the team-leader would make day to day decisions and go represent the team at meetings etc (but crucially he was still a worker at worked on the project 60-80% of the time).
Then the teams were collected into larger groups (~10-50 people), each group had at least one dedicated office/HR person that worked in the same place as everyone else and was the point-of-contact for a lot of things.
And finally the groups were collected into ‚fields‘ or whatever like production, engineering, marketing, etc.
Each field had further dedicated office people but they were located in another part of the building. Each of them had a manager which would coordinate the groups and to a way lesser extent the teams. He also had regular meetings with all team-leaders and the boss.

That was honestly pretty great because in your immediate surroundings everyone was treated pretty damn equally and it was a very friendly atmosphere.
Also having a dedicated office/HR person directly where you work instead of in some other part of the building was so good! It was so much easier to deal with HR stuff this way, I do not understand why most companies have it as a completely separate thing, that sucks ass.