Management isn’t one entity with one perspective so to some extent I can see why they might have competing interests and sometimes the ones who are “right” in terms of actually getting things done might lose. But,

> Another reason why is that managers will almost never give you dangerous advice, even if it’s what you need to hear. If a manager tells you to ignore company policy, and you do it wrong - for instance, if you post in Slack that you’re doing it and your manager said it was OK - then that’s bad for them. In fact, it’s much worse for them than it is for you. Tech company leadership often views engineers as useful idiots. Managers are expected to be professionals.

> However, lots of managers wish they could give you advice like this. They certainly appreciate it when you follow it. I’ve never been a manager, but it must be incredibly frustrating to manage strong engineers who would be much more effective if they approached work a little more tactically (and a little less according to the written job description).

This advice and circumstance basically sucks, right? Ultimately management (as a whole) is responsible for coming up with policies that don’t get in the way of productivity. Making policy and taking responsibility for when it doesn’t work out: that is part of their job.

The advice here is to just let your manager have the upside of having a team that is more productive by following an alternative set of rules, without the downside of accepting additional risk. That’s just letting them not do part of their job. Everybody would love a consequence-free dodge of the shitty part of their job.