> Most managers are terrible.

A sweeping statement indeed, but it does reflect my experience too.

Perhaps it's my ingrained deference to authority - when I start a new position I tend to believe that my manager has my best interests at heart. This is a mistake and I now believe it's better to maintain a kind of defensive attitude and to always be assertive in establishing, and if necessary negotiating, the responsibilities and expectations of your role and your relationship with the manager.

This may not necessarily be a personal failing on their part, this may just be a consequence of the operational management system you both work within.

> A sweeping statement indeed, but it does reflect my experience too.

IMO - managers are terrible at the same rate as ICs. But the damage a terrible IC can do is limited in most companies because there's guardrails like automated testing, pull requests, no access to the production database, etc. At worst they end up being a big timesuck for other team members until they get let go.

A terrible manager will sink a project or team single-handedly, though.

Just as a personal data point, most managers I had in my now 25-year career in tech were good.

They set clear goals and expectations, provided honest feedback, both positive and negative, and quickly jumped to help re-plan when things did not work out.

They were also asking what I am optimizing for (for me at different times it was more money; promotion; interesting problems to work on; time to explore other long-term products) and as far as I could tell worked with their managers to move me in that direction, sometimes successfully, sometimes not.

I did not assume any of my managers had my best interest in heart, but one of my first managers gave me some lessons on "how to manage your managers, myself included". It took a few iterations, but he convinced me that by far the #1 thing most managers want is for me to deliver things on time; not cut a few days off the project timeline. And if I learn to do that, they will advocate for my interests, shield me from corporate BS, etc.

Some specific advice from that manager was (in his words) "never promise something in 2 weeks unless you could demonstrate it today" and "do not sit quietly when you are given unrealistic timelines; counter with specific subtasks you see and how long you expect each will take". That general advice worked very well for me and helped build symbiosis with direct managers.

I did dislike a few managers, but those were generally good ICs stuck into a management role they did not like (or at least did not know how to do) and kept both sticking their fingers into what their team was doing and start timeline discussions with "it would take me one day to do this, I will give you two; go-build-this-now".

Again, just a personal data point; not claiming that most of the world works this way. I may have been just lucky.

I think that’s largely due to the weird notion that engineers will eventually “upgrade” to management, as though one is the advanced version of the other.

There are whole degree programs dedicated to managing and organizing people, but we’re like, “nah, Joe’s a good programmer so we should talk him into stopping that so he can supervise people instead”.

Fact is, there’s little relation between the two. A person may happen to be good at both, but expertise in one does not imply adequacy in the other.

We train people in their technical role, but we (generally) don't train people to manage -- and years of poor experience don't count.

I'm not a manager, and I don't want to be. But I'm quite happy with the manager training that my employer puts people through before giving them direct reports.

One should always be negotiating expectations, though, even when one considers management to have our best interests in mind. And also remember that your manager is learning how to manage from you. You get to shape their experience of being a manager, and you get (to an extent) to guide them in how they grow as a manager.

OTOH, this can be a case of the "if everyone around you is a jerk, the jerk is really you" rule.

If you can't work well with any manager the common denominator is you. It's also the only thing you can change.

People rise to their level of incompetence[1]. This simple principle explains most managers completely.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle

My first manager was really good so it came as quite a shock when the next one turned out to be a lying, conniving bastard. Given enough experience you get hardened to it. Of course it would be better if you didn't need to.

> it's better to maintain a kind of defensive attitude

As a manager/developer, I do sometimes see this attitude in some devs. I try very hard to help them find a different job where they are not working for me.

As a person whose done it all, independent stuff, senior ic stuff, management stuff, the main thing that makes management terrible is simply that most companies have no support for middle managers.

You are a good IC? Sure let's promote you to management, but in 95% of cases, we're not even going to pair you with anyone or have a senior manager help you understand, build and grow - we're going to throw you in the deep end and have you sink or swim.

This often ends up with stressed out people used to doing well now approaching an entirely new problem with slow feedback loops and entirely different protocols than before, and the amount of burned out shitty middle managers I see is off the charts.